


The Battle for John H. Watson

by SilentAuror



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Baby Watson, Infidelity, M/M, Moriarty is Alive, POV: Sherlock, POV: third person, Pining Sherlock, Romance, not TAB-compliant, post-series 3, series 3 fix-it, slight angst, written before TAB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 04:39:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5652775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock walks off the plane to find that Moriarty is alive, and for some reason John seems to be terribly angry with him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Battle for John H. Watson

**The Battle for John H. Watson**

 

_Did you miss me?_  
_Did you miss me?_  
_Did you miss me?_  
_Did you miss me?_

Mycroft silently clicks a button and switches off the screen and a grim quiet takes place of the mocking voice. 

“How widespread?” Sherlock asks. 

Their eyes meet. “All of the United Kingdom, and Ireland,” Mycroft informs him. 

To Sherlock’s left, John fidgets. “So what is this, then?” he asks. He’s angry, Sherlock thinks. He doesn’t understand and not understanding makes him impatient. Well: that’s fair. It makes _him_ angry and impatient, too. “I thought he was dead. Blew his own brain out that day.” 

He isn’t looking at Sherlock but Sherlock can feel anger and resentment emanating from John in waves. He isn’t sure why this would be, but now is not the time to ask. “So he did,” he confirms to John, but John isn’t looking at him. “Or so I thought.” He shifts his gaze back to his brother. “So – what is it?” he asks. “Is Moriarty alive?” 

Mycroft clears his throat. Twice. “I do not know,” he says, his eyes on his desk. “This will be your task, Sherlock. John. Both of you, if you’re willing to help, that is.” This gracious add-on is for John’s benefit. He doesn’t wait for an answer though, of course. With Mycroft, graciousness only ever extends so far. “We need answers. You may have whatever you require from me in terms of resources, access, or additional back-up. For my part, I’ll have my people start with the security breach and the broadcast itself. And you – ”

Sherlock cuts him off, getting to his feet. “Find Moriarty. Obviously.” He turns and strides toward the doors, John already in step beside him, and Mycroft doesn’t hold them back. The magnetic lock unseals and the bunker doors slide open directly into the lift. 

John waits until the doors are closed to say, “And how are we going to do that, exactly?” 

“Not sure,” Sherlock admits. A silence forms as soon as he stops talking and he suddenly feels very keenly aware of the fact that this is the first time that they’ve been on their own since he was released from the terminal mission to Serbia. The silence feels heavily loaded but he has no idea what John is thinking. When the doors open, he leaves the lift with something very like relief. He walks outdoors and makes for the kerb, aware that John is still there with him, like a shadow. A rather tense shadow. Without looking at him, Sherlock attempts to keep some levity in his tone as he flags down a taxi. “Coming back to Baker Street?” he asks, then cringes inwardly: it sounds as though he just asked whether or not John is going to move back in. 

John’s hesitation is palpable. “Do you have any clue where you’re going to start looking for Moriarty?” he asks. 

“Don’t say his name in public,” Sherlock admonishes as a taxi slows next to them. He opens the door and holds it for John expectantly. John sighs and gets in, and Sherlock follows him in secret triumph, pulling the door closed and giving the address at the same time. 

“Well?” John prompts under his breath as they pull away. 

“Not here,” Sherlock cautions, and John relapses into silence. 

Sherlock glances at him surreptitiously. Is this tension all due to Moriarty? Is any of it related to Serbia and the mission that never was? (Is John at all glad that he hasn’t gone? If he is, it’s difficult to tell.) Sherlock sighs as quietly as he can and wishes, not for the first time since his return to London, that he understood people better. No: not _people_. John. 

The car stops at their corner (at least Sherlock still thinks of it as ‘their’) and they go inside. It feels surreal, he thinks. The last time he was here at the house was on Christmas morning one week ago. They hadn’t even let him return to pack his things for the involuntary mission. The door to 221A opens. Mrs Hudson pokes her head out, looking for all the world like a burrow owl disturbed during its daytime sleep, and her confusion only deepens when her eyes fall on them. 

“Sherlock?” She sounds astonished. “Why, what in the world are _you_ doing here? I thought you’d been arrested! And that you were going away! Your brother said, when he was here!” 

Sherlock wonders how much Mycroft told her. In the car on the way to the tiny government-owned airstrip, he’d only said that everything had been explained to Mrs Hudson. “No, all that’s off,” he says briefly, and she crows in delight and comes over. He endures a hug, but is privately touched by it. At least _one_ person would have been sorry should he have failed to return, which he certainly expected. 

“That _is_ definitely off, then?” John asks, not quite looking at him all the way. 

“I’m afraid so.” Before he can continue, Mrs Hudson breaks in again. 

“I don’t think the heating’s on – I’ll run up and put on the kettle! You two take your time, come up when you like. Don’t mind me.” 

She hasn’t yet realised that John has moved out, Sherlock realises with a feeling like lead in his gut. Awkward, that. She doesn’t know that John and Mary are back together again, either. John waits for her to leave, then continues. “But you’re not being sent back later or something, after we deal with Moriarty,” he persists. 

“They didn’t say.” Sherlock is neutral. “Perhaps if I apprehend Moriarty and verify his death properly this time. Perhaps you’ll be stuck with me around after all.” 

A risked glance proves that John is gritting his teeth. “Good,” he says tersely and starts up the stairs. His back and the set of his shoulders say clearly that he is still considerably unhappy about the current state of affairs. Sherlock waits for a moment, then follows him. He does not entirely understand the anger and still feels somewhere between slighted and disappointed that John has not yet expressed any manner of relief or pleasure at his non-departure. At his reprieve from certain death in Eastern Europe. He himself has not yet fully grasped this, so perhaps it’s only fair, but he did think that John would be gladder than this when they told him. Perhaps his continued presence means more complications for John. Perhaps John thought it was going to be easier to continue his reconciliation with Mary without him around to get in the way. 

If only he were capable of getting in the way. No: this is a useless line of thought. Sherlock frowns inwardly in self-rebuke and pulls off his coat, hanging it on a hook behind the door. John has not yet taken off his jacket. Not staying, then? Sherlock eyes him out his peripheral vision and wonders how on earth he is meant to approach John. Will he be stiff, act like a stranger, afraid to sit in his own chair, take things from the fridge, put on the kettle? Generally behave as though he is at home? It’s the first time either of them have been here since they left on Christmas morning. Sherlock’s chest tightens a little, thinking of the way John hadn’t said anything, how they’d both pointedly ignored the bag in his hand as they waited for Mycroft’s car to arrive to pick them up. Is he supposed to act like the host now? It feels ridiculous; it’s only been a week since John lived here.

He clears his throat. “Er, make yourself at home,” he says, and the words come out even more stiffly than the set of John’s shoulders. And it sounds wrong, too, as though he is consciously pointing out that John left. Left _him_ , his brain wants to supply. Accepted his invitation to Christmas dinner with his parents and walked out on him at the same time. (Stop it.) 

John looks even more awkward than he feels, almost angry. “All right,” he says, and takes his jacket off, hanging it over the back of his chair. Mrs Hudson is fussing about in the kitchen. 

They cannot discuss Moriarty with her there, not really, but somehow Sherlock fears how much more constrained the atmosphere between them will become once she leaves. (Why is John so angry? Is it all Moriarty? _Is_ it something to do with him?) Sherlock wishes he had the first clue, but John’s always been a bit difficult to read in some ways. “You needn’t do anything special,” he says hastily to Mrs Hudson. “Just tea would be fine.” 

She scowls at him through her best mother-hen face. “Nonsense,” she scolds. “You look like you haven’t half been fed this past week! And it’s Christmas! Barely recovered from that shot and they’ve got you in a _gaol_ cell – what on earth were they thinking? Didn’t they know you haven’t been well?” 

Sherlock decides that this is not the moment to tell her that he shot a man, not that she would likely disapprove per se. Magnussen’s name has become her newest curse word ever since the day of his visit and his anointing of the fireplace. Instead, he casts about for something else to say. “Mrs Hudson – you probably saw it on the telly – ”

“That Moriarty’s back,” she interrupts, switching off the boiling kettle and pouring hot water into the teapot. “Yes, I did see, and I’m _not_ happy! Is that why you’re back, then? You’re going to straighten it all out?” 

He wishes he shared her simplistic view of the matter. “I’m going to try,” he says, a bit dryly. “I need to talk things over with John, though, so – ”

“Right you are,” Mrs Hudson says, mercifully cottoning on immediately. She makes for the door. “You boys just let me know if you need anything.” 

Sherlock decides not to tell her that John won’t be staying now, either. Not yet. “We will,” he says briefly, and she goes. He crosses to the teapot and carries it to the table. John is still standing where he is, looking awkward and uncomfortable, so Sherlock gestures at one of the kitchen chairs. “Sit,” he says, going to get a pair of mugs from the cupboards on the opposite side. “I don’t know if the milk is still good.” 

John clears his throat and looks down. “Should be, if neither of us opened it. I just bought it on, er, Christmas Eve. We’d run out that morning.” 

“Ah.” Sherlock goes to the fridge, trying not to be actively grateful for the reason to keep his back to John. It’s the closest they’ve come to acknowledging that John moved out, and the awareness of this fact, John’s departure, is extremely uncomfortable. He cannot help but feel it as a betrayal. He knew it was coming. He saw the signs: John texting furtively here and there, the very secrecy of the act saying exactly who it was he was texting. He’d started gathering his things from their common, shared spaces and taking them back to his room. He’d never officially moved _in_ again, to be fair. But it was nevertheless his home. And now he lives with Mary again, with the woman whose shot to the heart Sherlock has only just finished recovering from. He takes out the unopened milk bottle and brings it to the table. 

John has sat down at last, and got out a spoon as well. That’s something, at least, Sherlock thinks sardonically. He’s ventured all the way into the silverware drawer and hasn’t felt too compromised by this. He looks up at Sherlock. “How does it smell?” he asks, forcing a short-lived smile. 

Sherlock sits, uncaps the milk and sniffs. “Fine, actually.” He pours some into John’s cup and then his own. They occupy themselves with stirring, adding sugar in Sherlock’s case, sharing the singular spoon the way they always have. Sherlock doesn’t want to ask about the source of the heaviness between them. He clears his throat. “I suppose we should start with Scotland Yard. See if there have been any reports of unusual activity lately. Mycroft will be looking into the international side of things. Here in London, though, I suppose that’s the MI5.”

“You mean us,” John says dryly. “When have the MI-bloody-5 been any use to us in terms of localised terror or crime?” 

“Not frequently,” Sherlock agrees readily. “Should we check the papers?” 

“Sounds like a start.” John looks around. Mrs Hudson has stacked the past week’s papers on the worktop, so he gets up and brings them over. They split the pile and begin to leaf through the pages, looking for anything unusual. After awhile, John turns another page and says, “I’m surprised Lestrade hasn’t phoned yet.” 

“He’s probably up to his eyes. Or worse, my brother is already talking to him,” Sherlock says, rolling his own eyes, and John sighs. 

“Probably.” He switches papers. “How do you think he did it, then? Faked shooting himself in the head?” 

Sherlock shrugs. “The _how_ isn’t all that important, really. But I suppose he shot a blank and had fake blood packets hidden on his person? Though I fail to see how he could have had them strapped to the back of his head without my noticing or something. I do remember thinking that there was an odd absence of brain matter. Usually with a direct range shot through the back of the skull, there would have been bits of bone and brain, and also more blood than there was. I suppose I was slightly distracted at the moment. I should have noticed.” 

John ignores this last, his brow contracting, jaw working. “Yeah, well, I suppose you were busy committing suicide in front of me,” he says, his voice gritty with tension. “Or making me think you were, at least.” 

Sherlock feels as though he’s been slapped in the face, his mouth falling open before he can prevent himself. John hasn’t mentioned this since his return, since that first, terrible night. It occurs to him now that he never did get around to telling John that he’d really had no choice in the matter whatsoever, nor has he ever told him about the snipers. He takes a breath. “John – ”

John’s phone pings with a text. He takes it out as though he didn’t hear Sherlock at all and checks it. His face changes. “Oh God,” he says, sounding stunned. 

Sherlock is instantly on alert. “What? What is it?” 

John is already getting to his feet. “It’s Mary. Her contractions have started.” He makes for his jacket and pulls it on angrily, as though annoyed with himself for having taken it off in the first place, wasting precious time now. 

This feels like a punch to the gut somehow. “I thought she wasn’t due for another two weeks,” Sherlock says, his lips feeling numb. 

John wrestles his scarf on. “Yeah, well, these things happen with pregnancy.” He jams his feet into his shoes and Sherlock gets swiftly to his feet. 

“I’ll come down with you and get you a cab,” he says. He knows without asking that he is not invited to come along, and he would frankly prefer to avoid this scene, anyway. The spectre at the feast. 

“I’ll be fine,” John says. “I’m perfectly capable of hailing a taxi.” 

“I know that,” Sherlock says. “John…” He wants to ask if John is still going to work on the case with him, what’s going to happen once the baby is born. 

But John shakes his head, frowning. “Not now, Sherlock; I haven’t got time! I’ll – I’ll be in touch. Let you know about the baby and that.” 

“All right,” Sherlock says, the words hollow, but John is already on the stairs. He stays where he is until he hears the downstairs door open and close again. 

He is gone. Moriarty is back, but John is gone. For some reason, the memory of the argument they had when he once called one of Moriarty’s puzzles ‘elegant’ comes back to him now, remembering how the game used to be almost exhilarating, at least until it was John who was taken hostage. Now the idea of facing Moriarty alone makes Sherlock almost shrink from the prospect. He does not want to do this alone. He supposes he will have to contact Mycroft, work with him or something. But he’ll need something to show for it first. 

Despite these thoughts, Sherlock goes instead to the sofa and lies down on it. His mind is a whirlwind of varying emotions and it’s unsettling in the extreme. By all rights, he should be almost landing in Serbia by now, steeling himself for three to six months of trying to stay alive before inevitably failing to escape the trap set for him, his punishment for having killed Magnussen. Now he is lying on his own sofa in the knowledge that Moriarty is back, and John is with Mary, about to experience the birth of their daughter together. It’s impossible to process the reality of all of this, and its implications. Sherlock stares up at the ceiling. Strange that he should prefer the loaded tension with John to the absence of him in any form, but he does. 

The silence in the flat congeals around him. 

*** 

Twelve long hours later, John texts. _I have a daughter! Alexandra Leigh Watson, 7lb 4oz, born at 6:33 this morning._

Sherlock stirs, turning onto his side on the sofa where he eventually fell asleep and types back an automatic response that sounds heartier than it feels. After all, John is his best friend. One must keep up appearances. _Congratulations! I trust she is in good health._ He does not ask after Mary. Perhaps the omission will be conspicuous. He presses send nevertheless. 

John’s response comes thirty seconds later. _She’s great! Do you want to come and meet her?_

Dread. Sherlock hesitates for a long moment, then heaves a sigh and asks which hospital and room to find them in. He showers, dresses without any particular hurry, white shirt under black suit, and wonders if he should bring something. Do people normally bring things? Will he be expected to hold the baby, or would Mary even trust him that far? Would John, for that matter? He catches his own eye as he fusses at his hair and glares at himself in the mirror. What is the _point_ of worrying about his appearance? John has just had a child. If it had been only Mary to compete against – no. This line of thought is foolish. He never stood a chance. He has known this since the day he returned and John didn’t choose him over Mary, not even once they’d reconciled. John had never shown so much as a flicker of dilemma, of even slight indecision in terms of his resolve to go ahead with his marriage. He’d hoped. Oh yes, he had hoped – in secret, of course, but – visions of John agonising in the moral balance of weighing Mary, his placeholder fiancée, against Sherlock, the man he’d mourned and perhaps secretly cared for all those years, and at some point finally decided – with great difficulty, of course – to set Mary aside and choose their old life together again. Enhanced this time by mutual confessions and discussions of how long they’d each felt the way they had in respective secrecy, et cetera, ad infinitum. 

But this never happened. There was no conflict for John. No dilemma. No difficult decision to be made. And so Sherlock had silently accepted the truth and planned John’s wedding for him, infinitely better than John or Mary could have planned it on their own. He made a formal gift of John to Mary at the reception, during his speech. Relinquished all claim to John. Made it clear that he was not in the equation. That he’d never been in the first place was secondary. He’d wanted to make his own position clear, that he understood that John belonged to Mary now, and that he would not be trying to compete. Not that he could have, but the point was that no one think he was trying. 

He’d thought that perhaps the terms had changed when Mary shot him. But this is also not the case. John really and truly does love Mary, and has no intention of ever placing Sherlock above his marriage in the long run. He has accepted this, at least more or less. Had already accepted it when he made the decision to confirm that John’s gun was loaded before they left for Appledore on Christmas Day. And in the moment, he decided to give John the gift of the marriage he wanted, clearing Mary’s troubles away with a single bullet shot and granting John the lie he wanted to believe, the ability to look the other way from Mary’s past and start afresh. He hadn’t particularly wanted to die, but then, he did shoot a man. It was a consequence and he accepted that, too. 

All the same, he thinks drearily as the taxi makes its way toward the hospital in the early morning traffic, it’s a little much to ask him to go and feign delight over the baby that has sealed his place outside the immediate circle of John’s life. The living proof of his genetic production with the woman who tried to kill him, the woman who took John from him. No, that’s not fair, either: John went quite willingly. People do not ‘take’ other people. John made a choice, and he chose Mary. 

He walks through the corridors of the Royal London’s maternity ward until he arrives at the correct room. John is sitting not far from the door, dozing against his hand, his elbow propped up on the arm of the cheap, probably uncomfortable chair. Sherlock stops in front of him and says his name quietly, and John’s eyes open at once. He blinks once or twice and smiles. “Sherlock. You came.” 

“I said I would.” Sherlock feels acutely ill-at-ease. “Why are you out here?”

“Mary’s sleeping,” John explains. “The baby is in the nursery. Come and see.” He pushes himself to his feet and rubs his eyes and yawns. 

He looks tired, Sherlock thinks critically. More so than a night of missed sleep would usually have him looking. He refrains from commenting on this. “Was it… difficult?” he asks, mostly to be polite. He’s hardly squeamish where bodies are concerned, obviously, but he does have an active desire to avoid hearing anything involving descriptions of Mary’s genitalia and reproductive organs, and any birth story would naturally involve these, he imagines. 

Mercifully John spares him the details. “A bit long, but not complicated,” he says. “Mary’s fine.” 

“Good.” The word is clipped, inviting no follow-up, and John does not offer any. Sherlock lets another fifteen paces pass. “It’s a nice name,” he says, glancing sidelong at John. 

He gives a strangely tight smile at this. “Mary chose it,” he says briefly. “Both parts.” 

“Ah.” Sherlock knows better than to probe. “But – you’re happy with it?” 

John shrugs. “Sure. It’s fine. I guess naming the kid is the mother’s prerogative, right?” 

Sherlock privately disagrees, but decides to keep this to himself as well, making a neutral sound instead. 

They stop in front of the nursery. John surveys the rows of newborns. “Besides,” he adds, “I wasn’t exactly around much during the pregnancy.” Before Sherlock can respond to this, John points. “There. First row, third from the left.” 

Sherlock leans closer to the glass. He is to be spared holding the infant for the time being. That’s something, at any rate. The baby is sleeping, small fists balled above her. A soft down of light brown hair is dusting her head and from where he is standing, Sherlock can make out the distinct shape of the Watson nose that both John and Harry have. His heart sinks a little further. Somehow he had been holding out hope that the baby wasn’t John’s or something. Anything to prevent this from happening. “She has your nose,” he says, actively forcing down the turmoil in his gut. His words sound pained. Perhaps John will interpret it as – tenderness or some such thing. 

John’s own smile seems tight, again. “She does. Yeah,” he agrees. 

Sherlock turns to glance at him and sees that there are lines between his eyes. (Should he ask?) “John…”

John shakes his head, not saying anything, not explaining. The moment grows awkward. 

“You’re tired,” Sherlock tries, offering a cover. “You were up all night. Let me get you a coffee.”

John swallows, the lines going from his nose to the corners of his mouth etched tightly. He nods. “Yeah. All right.” His voice comes out half in a whisper and he clears his throat afterward, as though to explain it. 

Sherlock ignores this. “Do you know where the cafeteria is?” 

“I actually do,” John says. “We were here once, remember? When you got all that glass in your leg from that bomb going off on the other side of the window. It was too deep for me to dig out, so we came here. You were unconscious for part of it, I think, but it was definitely here. They insisted on stitching you up themselves, so I went downstairs and got a coffee while I was waiting.” 

They’ve arrived in front of a bank of lifts and John pushes the down button. “I remember,” Sherlock says. “I still have a few small scars from the glass.” 

“You must have a pretty big collection of those by now,” John says, but there’s something tight in this, too, and Sherlock thinks of Bart’s and the day he jumped. He also thinks of the other, newer scars that he has now, and of the fact that John doesn’t even know about them. Maybe one day, when the timing seems right. If it ever does. 

Things are slightly better between them. Something is still off with John, but perhaps that’s just the fatigue. Somehow Sherlock does not think that this is the case, but then, his reading of John has always been unreliable. It’s easier to choose to believe that he’s only tired, that the deepening lines on his face have nothing to do with anything but lack of sleep. 

The lift doors opens. “Voilà,” John says, gesturing at a busy cafeteria. “Coffee’s this way. Come on.” 

*** 

Two days pass. John and Mary and the baby are home now, which is to say at Mary’s rather nice flat on the opposite side of the city. John has entombed himself in suburban life, Sherlock thinks caustically, as he tries to prevent himself from thinking about it at all. He ordered flowers through an online service and had them delivered to the flat. That should take care of that. He never did have a chance to ask John if he was going to continue working on this case or not while at the hospital, or perhaps he shied away from any such opportunities when they did arise. 

He goes back to St. Bart’s, to the roof, but of course there is nothing to be found. He goes to the pool, which is silent and dark and devoid of clues. He goes to Molly’s lab and reads through her autopsy reports of the body that had been identified as James Moriarty’s. He texts his brother to ask about the possibility of exhuming the grave. Molly has sworn up and down that the body she processed was Moriarty’s. 

“He was _dead_ , Sherlock,” she insisted, when he asked. “And if he hadn’t been when he arrived, he certainly was by the end of the autopsy!” 

“And you’re absolutely _certain_ it was him?” he demanded. “You checked dental records, blood type, any known scars or markings, everything?” 

“Of course!” Molly was defensive. “I know what I’m doing, Sherlock! The only way I could have been wrong was if he’d changed his records in the system in advance.” 

Sherlock gave her the card of Mycroft’s top hacker (‘securities analyst’ or some such rot) and told her to call and have the man review any possible breaches in security. 

She’d fidgeted then. “The thing is… all the computers were replaced sometime right around then. Every single machine in Bart’s. I can’t remember if it was before that or after, but it was right about the same time. So I’m not sure if he’d be able to tell or not.” 

Sherlock’s heart sank. So much for that. “Well, have him take a look anyway,” he’d said, then left. 

The problem is simply that none of the information they’ve ever had on Moriarty could be considered entirely reliable. Mycroft’s MI5 agents took finger prints when they’d had him in custody, but the records for those could have been changed, too. He’d refused to submit a DNA sample and without specifically related cause, obtaining legal permission to impose the giving of a sample would have been impossible. Or not impossible, as Sherlock had pointed out at the time, only inadmissible in court, and who cared about that? Mycroft had, evidently, citing other methods of identification at the time. Of course, all of those could have been altered to match whomever Moriarty had chosen to be his double when pre-planning his death, if he had. 

He is getting nowhere and finally admits it to Mycroft the third day after the birth of John’s child. Mycroft is equally defeated and therefore not as harsh as he could be. “But what about now?” he asks. “Have you heard anything, found any leads to anything that could point to him?” 

“Not so far,” Sherlock says. “And even if you grant me access to every CCTV camera in the city, I doubt he would be so foolish as to allow himself to get photographed.”

“It’s difficult to avoid in some places,” Mycroft points out. “Our coverage is _very_ thorough.” 

“He would know where the holes are,” Sherlock says flatly. He pinches the bridge of his nose. He needs John to bounce ideas off, not Mycroft. John always asks the right questions to trigger the right chains of deduction, but now he must make do on his own. He did all right while he was away, but it’s always better with John there. His thoughts connect more quickly, the chemistry of John-as-sounding-board and his own electrical circuits functioning perfectly. He’d had to unlearn that and remember how he’d always done it in all those years before he’d known John. 

“There is always the chance that he will make himself known to you,” Mycroft reminds him. “He does relish the game, after all.” 

_I don’t. Not any more,_ Sherlock thinks. “I’ll let you know if he does.” He disconnects and spends a listless fifteen minutes staring at the opposite wall. It’s all so useless without John. 

*** 

Mycroft, damn him to infinity, is correct. 

The text reads simply, _Did you miss me? Jim xx_. Sherlock watches John intently as his eyes scan the short message several times over, his expressive face troubled. (In the silence, Sherlock imagines leaning over, putting his lips to the furrow of John’s brow, to the vein throbbing in his temple. Trying to reassure him with his arms, telling him that things are going to be all right. This, of course, is a fantasy in every respect. Dismiss.) 

John looks up and hands the phone back. “It was sent an hour ago?” 

Sherlock assents. “The number, of course, is already out of service.” 

John frowns more definitely now. “So how are you supposed to talk to him, should you want to?” 

Sherlock shrugs. “Possibly through my website again. I imagine that this is the game, though: that he contacts – us.” He nearly stumbles before saying _us_ and inwardly winces, wondering if John will think this too presumptive, start to withdraw, citing the baby. Mary. All of that. 

He makes a thoughtful sound instead. “Can we draw him out somehow, do you think? Like you did with him at the pool?” 

Sherlock looks at him sharply. “The first time I tried that, he abducted you. The second time, I tried to get you safely out of the way, but you came back too quickly.” 

John’s entire face crunches in confusion. “What? When was that?” 

_Oh_. Will saying this mean having to tell John about the snipers now? Sherlock hesitates, but it’s too late. “At Bart’s,” he says briefly, almost muttering, and does not meet John’s eyes. “When you received the call about Mrs Hudson. You figured it out and came back. I mean, it sort of worked, but the point is that you weren’t supposed to see it. I was trying to keep you out of the way of that. Of all of it. That, and Moriarty.” 

John is breathing audibly, his jaw clamped shut, shoulders rising and falling as he breathes, staring at Sherlock. He swallows hard. “Sher – maybe we should focus on – on now, on this time,” he says after a moment of internal struggle. “Do you think we should try to draw him out, or should we wait? Or is that just playing into his hands?” 

The dangerous moment is past, but Sherlock feels privately disappointed, too. Perhaps this is as close as they’ll ever get to discussing that day and why things had to happen the way they had. John patently does not want to hear about it, does not want to understand his rationale for having done it. Not that he’d had much choice, with three lives hanging in the balance. “I don’t know,” he says. He moves away and sits down in one of the kitchen chairs, thinking. “Possibly.” 

John waits, then pulls out the end chair and sits, crossing his arms over his chest. “I suppose that even if you posted on your website, it would still give him time to arrange things as he’d like, just like at the pool. I could give the sniper a miss this time.”

“Was there just one?” Sherlock muses, more to himself than to John, but it’s really the same thing. “There were so many laser points.” He does not voice his long-held private curiosity as to whether or not one of the snipers was Mary. The air between them grows heavy and he wonders if the thought is there between them anyway, obvious but unarticulated, left silent. (Or perhaps John is thinking no such thing.) Sherlock rubs at an old scratch on the surface of the table, remembering how it got marked that way. “What does Mary think of all this?” He tries to make the question light, but his words come out sounding strained and he knows the ruse is utterly transparent. 

John gives him a suspicious look. “Why do you ask?” 

(Implement strategic retreat.) “I just wondered,” Sherlock says, shrugging. “I suppose she might have old contacts she could go to for information. Potentially.” 

“That’s all behind her now,” John says, still sharp. “She started over, Sherlock. We have to let her leave her past behind.” 

Sherlock mentally retreats even further, slightly stung by the reproach in John’s tone. He realises belatedly that John may be telling himself as much as anyone else, but still. “All right,” he says, surrendering the point. 

“She just became a mother,” John says, still a touch prickly. “She’s worried, of course. As am I.” 

This last almost succeeds in not sounding like a hastily tacked-on afterthought. Almost. “Of course,” Sherlock says, the words hollow and echoing in his gut. “I suppose we have no choice but to wait, then.” 

“What about in the news?” John asks. “We could go back to the pool, or anywhere else you ever saw him.” 

“I already went to the pool,” Sherlock tells him. “The day before last.”

“What?” John looks at him, his face accusing. “You did?”

Sherlock feels the crease at the bridge of his nose appear. “Yes,” he says. “Problem?” 

“You went alone?” John asks. His face is closed but Sherlock senses anger beneath. (Why anger? Why at _this_? Why can’t he understand?)

“Yes,” he says slowly. “I just went to see, but there was nothing – and no one – there.” 

“What if there had been?” John isn’t looking at him, his words clipped and even. “What if you had been trapped there, the way we were the first time?” 

Sherlock opens his mouth, then hesitates. “Then I suppose I would have been in trouble,” he says, keeping it light. “I – didn’t want to bother you. You only went home from the hospital that day.” 

“I wasn’t staying in the hospital,” John says. “I was just there during the day.” 

“Either way. You were busy.” Sherlock gets up and goes to the kettle, takes it to the sink and fills it, then returns and plugs it in. “How is she?” 

“The baby?” John says, as though startled by the question. 

(God knows he isn’t asking about Mary.) “Yes.” Sherlock scoops loose Earl Grey leaves into the teapot. 

“She’s… great,” John says, sounding a bit absent. “Yeah. Great. Sleeps a lot. She’s in good health. Reflexes all sound.”

He sounds as though he is talking about a patient. “Has the name grown on you?” 

“I never disliked it,” John says at once. “And it was fine that Mary chose it. It still is. We’re going to call her Lexi.” 

Sherlock grimaces to the teapot but his back is still to John. “I see.” 

“I suggested Alex, but Mary didn’t go for it.” It’s John’s turn to hesitate. “You know… I actually think that maybe Alexandra was Mary’s name. That she maybe went by Alex. Because when I suggested it, she reacted oddly. Like I’d called her by name rather than suggesting a short form. I could be wrong, though. So if that’s the case, I understand why she’d prefer a different name for our daughter.”

Sherlock does not point out that, this being the case, Mary could have chosen a different name altogether. It does seem like her, though: allowing her vanity to dictate that their infant daughter bear the name of her killer mother’s original identity. He is curious about the state of the marriage, given John’s comment about having missed the majority of the pregnancy at the hospital the other day, Mary not having allowed him to have a say in the name of their progeny. Somehow he cannot ask, though. The question would seem too transparent. Too invasive. “And Alexandra is too long?” he asks instead, his tone carefully light, bringing the tea to the table. 

“Bit of a handle for a newborn, yeah.” John doesn’t look at him, pushing his chair back instead and going to the cupboard to find some cups. 

He is being brusque, avoiding eye contact. Hiding, then. He does not want his real feelings on the matter known. Sherlock suppresses a sigh. Should he talk about Moriarty some more, then? He decides to try this. “I spoke to Lestrade.”

“Oh?” John turns back and sets a cup down in front of him, and Sherlock keeps his eyes down to avoid revealing the fact that he’s pleased by this, John going into the cupboards again, as though he still lives there. “And?” 

“He’s got nothing. He’s talking to my brother, too.” 

John’s face scowls, almost involuntarily. Then he deliberately erases the expression. “That milk still good?” he asks instead. “Is there any?” 

“I’ll check. Sorry.” Sherlock gets up to inspect, thinking that this is ridiculous, both of them taking turns popping up from the table like jacks-in-a-box. (Is it really so impossible to just sit down across from one another? They managed it at the hospital the other day.) The milk is fine. He brings it back and offers it to John to check for himself, and John takes it from him and does so, pouring a tot into his mug and pushing it across to Sherlock. 

“Have you told Mycroft about the text?” he asks, glancing over at Sherlock. 

Sherlock stirs a large amount of sugar into his tea and shakes his head. “I will. Later. He’ll expect me to have found my own solution or something first.” 

“I see.” John sounds exceedingly dry and this is curious, too.

He and Mycroft have never been particularly cordial toward one another, but John isn’t usually this prickly about him, either. Sherlock feels his lips compress in silent frustration. “I didn’t try texting back, but I found out from the service provider that it was a burn phone and already out of use. He would have shut it off and likely destroyed the SIM card as soon as he sent the text.” 

“So we wait.” John shoots him another look, testing to see if he is correct. “Is that the consensus, then?” 

“I suppose so, yes.” Sherlock fidgets, then gets up and goes to his desk in the sitting room, opening one of the drawers. “I have something for you,” he says from there. He withdraws the SIG from the envelope he’d stowed it in, still sealed in its evidence bag, and brings it back to the table. He sets it down between them. “I think you should be carrying it. Just in case.”

John stares at it as though he hasn’t seen it before. “Why?” 

“It’s Moriarty,” Sherlock says heavily. “And you have both a wife and a child now. A newborn. You’re vulnerable. An easy – no, an obvious target,” he corrects himself. It’s really not reasonable to call the likes of John Watson an easy target, but the fact is that he’s already been abducted twice before in their acquaintance and Sherlock prefers not to take chances on a third instance. 

“What about you?” John delivers the question like a challenge. 

Sherlock lets the corner of his lip curl very slightly. “I’m not planning on shooting anyone else in the near future.”

John nods only just perceptibly, almost smiling. “I suppose that was always more my job than yours.” 

Sherlock pushes the gun toward him. “Take it,” he urges. “You have people to protect now.” 

John’s almost-smile drops instantly, his eyes rising to meet Sherlock’s and for a moment Sherlock almost thinks he looks terribly hurt, but then his jaw clenches and he puts his hand on the plastic bag and draws the gun closer. “Yes. I do,” he says tightly. He pushes his chair back and gets abruptly to his feet. “I should go.” 

His tea is untouched. Sherlock looks at it. No point commenting. John will be well aware that he hasn’t drunk it and pointing it out would just make things even more awkward. His throat is tight. “All right,” he says, and doesn’t fight it. He has already made the decision to let John go. The problem with major decisions is that one is forced to remake them all the time. Confirm them. John is Mary’s. John gave himself to Mary. They have a baby. Of course John has to go. He doesn’t get up to watch him put his coat back on. 

He hears the zip and then John pauses. “You’ll let me know if – ”

“Yes.” It’s a clipped monosyllable; no need to draw this out. 

“Good.” John turns and trots down the stairs as though unable to wait to leave. 

Sherlock counts his steps, listens for the door, then pushes his own tea away and buries his face in his arms on the table. 

*** 

When the next text comes, he calls John. “There’s another one. Another text,” he says, skipping directly over the preamble of smalltalk, which would almost surely be painful. He’s just relieved that John answered the phone. He checks the time on the kitchen clock. Just after seven in the evening. Is he home, then? 

“Really? What does it say?” John asks at once. 

Sherlock swipes his thumb across the screen of his phone and reads. “‘ _Been thinking over our memories, sexy. Nine storeys is a long way to fall!! Have you figured out how I slipped through your fingers yet? Jim xx_ ’”

John scowls. “And what do you think _that_ means?” 

“I don’t know.” Sherlock hesitates, then takes a breath. “I thought perhaps I should go back to Bart’s again.”

“No!” The word is emphatic. John clears his throat, then says it again. “No. Don’t go back there. Not alone.” 

Sherlock hesitates. “John… this could be a clue.” He pauses again. “I was going to ask if you would come with me, if that makes you feel any better…?”

There is a long silence on the other end, then John says, “I can’t. I’m sorry. Mary’s out and I’m at home with the baby.”

Sherlock grits his teeth in silent frustration. “Tomorrow, then?” 

“I’ve really got to work. I’m the only one working right now, and…” John trails off. Sherlock wonders if he is thinking, as he is, that Mary surely has pots of money hidden away somewhere from all those years of collecting blood fees. “I’m sorry,” John says more firmly. “I can’t.”

Sherlock sighs noisily. “Well then, I’ve obviously got to go on my own, then. You can’t really have it both ways, John!” 

“Sherlock – ” It’s sharp. “I’m – doing the best I can here, all right?” John sounds immensely frustrated. “I don’t like it any more than you do, all right? But I’ve got a child to look after and support, here. I’ve only just got things back to normal, sort of, with Mary, and I can’t just – I – ” He stops, takes a breath, and Sherlock waits, pinching the bridge of his nose and wishing this awful tension weren’t there between them. After a moment, John goes on, sounding more composed. “Look, I’m bored to tears here. Mary’s been gone for nearly two hours, which she said was the plan, but I’m just stuck in the house with nothing to do. I’d like to come with you. Especially because it’s important, and dangerous and I don’t want you going on your own. I just can’t, though.” 

“Okay.” Sherlock’s voice sounds dry, the word coming out too quickly, too anxious to smooth things over. He hesitates for a long moment. “Could I… come over there? Keep you company? Talk things over, about the case?” 

John’s hesitation is indication enough, and Sherlock winces at it. “Do you… really want to come here?” he asks at last, which makes it immediately ten times more awkward. 

“Sure,” Sherlock says, forcing it to sound normal. “Why not?” 

“You’d be bored to death. There’s nothing here but a newborn infant, and we both know how you feel about children.”

 _Yes, but you’d be there, too,_ Sherlock thinks but does not say. “How much longer is Mary supposed to be out?” 

“Another hour or two, I’d say,” John says. “She went for dinner with a friend or two and then they were going to go and get pedicures or some such thing.” 

“I’ll be over in twenty minutes,” Sherlock says. “I’ll get a cab.”

John still sounds dubious. “Do you even remember where the house is?” 

“Yes. Of course.” Sherlock hangs up before John can raise further objections. He flies to the mirror to check his appearance, decides he looks acceptable, then pulls on his coat and goes down to get a taxi. He passes the fifteen-minute drive drumming his fingers against the bone of his knee. When he finally arrives at the house, he pays without paying attention and walks up the path to the door, feeling strangely nervous. (This is ridiculous, he thinks, scowling to himself.) He makes to ring the bell, then reconsiders: will this wake the baby? Sleeping infants are definitely preferable to screaming ones. He knocks instead. 

John appears shortly, smiling awkwardly (but smiling; this is the important consideration). “Come in,” he says, standing back. 

Sherlock surveys him and thinks privately that he looks dreadful. The bags under his eyes are twice the size they normally are. He should not express this thought, probably. He takes off his coat and looks around for a hook. He finds one and deposits the coat there. At least John didn’t offer to take it for him. He follows John into the sitting room, feeling like an alien in a foreign country. Enemy territory, an inner voice suggests. “Is the baby asleep?” he asks diffidently. 

“Yeah.” John gestures toward a cot set up in the corner of the room. “Be thankful.”

Sherlock refrains from expressing his gratitude. “You worked today?” 

John nods and rubs his eyes. “Why, do I look tired?” 

Sherlock hesitates. “A little.” 

“I feel like I’m about a thousand years old right now, if you want to know. Usually she sleeps all right, but last night she woke up four or five times. I get why Mary wanted a night off.” John changes the subject. “Would you like something? Tea? A drink?” 

“Only if you do,” Sherlock says, remembering John’s untouched tea the previous week. John doesn’t respond as such, so he chooses an armchair next to the sofa and sits, pushing past the question of beverages. “Why don’t you sit down?” he suggests. 

John gives him a look of patent relief and sinks onto the sofa with a sigh. “It’s so boring. Just being stuck in a house with a baby. It’s dull enough when she’s sleeping; it’s worse when she’s awake.”

“I’m sure there are benefits,” Sherlock says, attempting to display tact. This is a rare chance to probe, in fact. “How does it feel?” he asks in real curiosity. “Being a father.” 

He is cringing inwardly, expecting some typical statement along the lines of it having changed his life/priorities/perspective, the usual sort of thing that new parents generally say, but John shrugs. “I don’t know. It hardly feels real yet.” 

Sherlock frowns at him. “It is real, John. You have a child. A daughter.”

“Yeah,” John says. “I know.” 

A small silence falls, but this time Sherlock doesn’t feel it as awkward, or at least that the awkwardness isn’t directed at him. When it seems clear that John is not going to say anything else about either the joys or trials of newfound parenthood, he changes the subject. “Have you thought at all about why Moriarty might have come back just now, if he was alive all this time?”

“I’ve wondered that, yeah, but I haven’t come up with anything yet,” John says. He rakes his fingers through his hair and Sherlock thinks that it’s about time he had it cut, though he secretly likes it a bit grown-out like this. It softens him, takes away the air of military a little, though he relishes that, too. It seems to bring out the side of John that likes making soups in the autumn and kindling fires on chilly evenings, turning on lamps and getting out well-worn books and blankets. The John he has lived with versus the John he has worked with. John meets his gaze now. “Do you think it _is_ him?” he asks. “Is there any chance someone could be impersonating him?” 

“Every chance,” Sherlock agrees. “But the cleverness of it. The tone, even just in text messages. It sounds like him.” 

“That sounds rather more like gut instinct than logic,” John says a bit dryly, and Sherlock has to concede the point. Before he can respond, there is a stirring from the cot and the baby makes a few sounds. John gets up and goes over, looking down and smiling, tenderness coming through despite his fatigue. “Hey,” he says. “What’s this, then? Finished napping already?” He looks up at a clock ticking from the wall. “I was hoping you’d just keep sleeping, frankly, but here you are.” He bends and picks the baby up. “Come here, you. Time to meet someone important.” 

Sherlock hides a smile at this, though anxiety quickly covers the slight bloom of pleasure at John’s words as the latter approaches bearing his newborn child. He looks up at John, doubt showing plainly on his face, he is certain. “Am I supposed to hold her?” he asks with obvious discomfort. 

John isn’t having no for an answer. “Yup. Hold out your arms. Have you ever held a baby before?”

“No. I understand that one must support the head.” Sherlock accepts the infant gingerly, afraid of dropping her, and almost doesn’t notice how close the transfer brings him into contact with John. (He does notice, though.) Furthermore, John then arranges his arms and adjusts his positioning, and something deep in Sherlock’s gut aches at the touch. 

“There you are,” John says. “Sherlock Holmes: my daughter Alexandra. Lexi.” 

“Alexandra,” Sherlock repeats, ignoring the twee nickname. He looks down into the infant’s face and sees John’s nose, the midnight-grey of John’s eyes. The rosebud of Mary’s mouth, the angle of her eyebrows. This is their child, the product of their physical union. The thought makes him feel nauseated, yet there is something indubitably pleasant about the weight of the child in his arms. He can feel John’s eyes upon him, waiting. “She looks like you,” he says, his throat inexplicably tight. (No: not inexplicably. He understands perfectly well why.) 

“Do you think so?” John sounds pleased, and that makes it even worse. 

“I told you at the hospital: she has your nose.” The baby is looking at him, blinking in the lamplight, and emits a soft sound, her mouth making vague shapes and expressions, none of which mean anything to him. It strikes him that a human baby is as foreign to him as an actual alien would be. 

Satisfied that he has proper hold of the child, John backs toward the sofa and sprawls into it again. “You’re actually pretty good at that,” he comments, his tone curious and difficult to read. 

“It’s hardly rocket science,” Sherlock says, not looking up from the child’s face. She gazes back at him and makes another unidentifiable baby sound. 

Somehow either or both of these things make John laugh, just a short huff of breath, but it strikes Sherlock that it’s the first time he’s heard John laugh since before Christmas Day. This makes the ache in his gut deepen. John yawns. 

“Are you sleepy?” Sherlock asks. “Take a nap, if you want.”

John looks dubious. “Sherlock…”

“It’s all right,” Sherlock says. “I’ll be here, and Mary will be back soon. You should get some sleep while you can if you’re going to be any use to your patients tomorrow.” 

Putting this way makes it sound suitably sharp-tongued and in character, and John gives him a look of gratitude. “Are you sure?” he asks, though. “I mean, you came to visit me – it seems rude to just go to sleep and ignore you.” 

Sherlock shakes his head, thinking that if they tallied up every rude or kind thing they’ve ever done to or for one another, it would take years to complete the reckoning. “What are friends for?” he asks rhetorically, instead. He nods at the sofa. “Go to sleep. I’ll be right here.” 

John hesitates a moment longer. “You okay with Lexi, there?” 

Sherlock looks down at the infant. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.” 

“Well, if she cries, I’m sure I’ll wake up, anyway,” John says dryly. “God knows I haven’t learned to sleep through it yet.” He stretches out on the sofa and pulls a blanket down from the back of it, kicks until it’s more or less covering him, and falls almost immediately asleep. 

Sherlock watches him surreptitiously. He’s certainly experienced John napping on the sofa at Baker Street many a time. This isn’t really any different, but it nonetheless feels different. They are in the wrong place. Wrong house, wrong part of the city. Mary, even in her absence, is very much there between them. And there is a child. A baby. Sherlock looks at her and sees that she appears to be following her father’s lead, her eyes closing. (Good, he thinks. Sleep. I have no idea what else to do with you.) It’s strangely relaxing, oddly: holding a sleeping infant. The silence in the sitting room is broken only by the rhythms of the ticking clock on the wall, John’s long, even breaths, and the softer, shallower breaths of his child. It’s oddly peaceful and for once in his life, Sherlock actually doesn’t feel bored. 

It’s a little too easy to allow his imagination to wander, however. This house is far more ‘normalised’ than Baker Street has ever been. No insects on display, no visible weaponry lying about. There are pictures in proper frames on the walls, containing tasteful landscapes and paintings that Sherlock supposes one would buy. No skulls, human or otherwise. The furniture is moderately new and comfortable and goes together. John has entombed himself in normal, suburban life – the fantasy of so many. Sherlock has never in his life actively craved this life, but with John in it? That could be different. He imagines them eating three square meals at normal times of the day, basic, boring dishes that anyone could make. He looks down at the sleeping child in his arms. And a baby. What would _that_ be like? Having a child with John? Raising it together? Going to school plays and shopping for apple sauce and toys and clothing. Answering dozens of questions per hour and listening patiently to stories told, drawings explained. Toys all over the floor. Changing nappies and waking in the middle of the night. No. None of that holds any charm. But doing it with John, having a child to bind John to him – it’s _almost_ tempting. The baby is rather sweet, truth be told. But he does not want to have one of his own. (But – if Mary were to exit the picture, but left the child behind?) Sherlock thinks about it for a long several minutes, then silently agrees that he would accept having the child if it could mean having John, too. He would rather have John on his own. But if it meant getting a chance at the rest of it – the thought is literally breathtaking. 

He looks over at John, at his sleeping face. The corners of his eyes and mouth suggest tension that has not gone away even as he sleeps. (He wants to put the child down and kiss the tension from John’s face, smooth it from his forehead, make him smile.) He has never felt this way about anyone or anything else, but now this yearning is constant and unrelenting. He can all but see it emanating from himself in waves, reaching out to John, entreating him. Love is terrible, Sherlock thinks, his gaze stuck on the curve of John’s lower lip, wanting so badly that it hurts. If John woke right now, he would see it. It’s far too close to the surface. 

A key turns in the lock and Sherlock registers it half a second too slowly: Mary. Mary is home. He clears his throat and re-establishes his grip on the baby. 

“John?” she calls softly, obviously not wanting to wake the baby if she’s asleep. 

Sherlock does not answer; Mary will come looking and find him there soon enough. John stirs on the sofa and turns onto his side. “In here,” he says, his eyes still closed. 

Mary comes into the sitting room, and something in her stance makes Sherlock instantly aware that she was aware of his presence. She saw the coat, probably. She looks suspicious, her face sharp. “What are you doing here?” she asks, and for once there’s no mock playfulness in her tone. She’s still wearing her own coat, the bright red thing, the buttons open, her hair mussed from the wind. 

Nevertheless, her bluntness is startling. Sherlock opens his mouth to respond, slightly taken aback, but John frowns and speaks before he can, sitting up, his legs swinging down to the floor. “Mary,” he says, sounding disturbed. “He’s just visiting. Christ.” 

Mary’s hands go to her hips, her eyes going from John to Sherlock. “Did he call you and try to get you to babysit while I was out?” she asks him. 

Sherlock feels his eyebrows contract. “No,” he says, a trifle coolly. “I needed to ask his opinion on something related to a case.”

Mary clearly does not believe him. “Which is why you were apparently taking a nap,” she says, speaking to John now. 

John rubs at his temples. “Would you give it a rest? I was tired, all right? Sherlock offered to hold Lexi for a bit so that I could have a kip. I worked all day.”

“So did I, as I have every other day for the past three weeks,” Mary snipes, and Sherlock feels decidedly like an intruder. 

“Look, I was just about to go, anyway,” he says hastily, aborting the retort forming in John’s mouth. 

John looks at him, his mouth set unhappily. “I’ll put Lexi back in her cot, then,” he says, and makes to get up. 

“No. I will.” Mary cuts him off, coming over to Sherlock. “Give her to me.” 

Without waiting for him to acknowledge this, Mary stoops to take back her child and Sherlock finds himself closer than he’s been to her since the day he was nearly sent to Serbia. As Mary swiftly gathers the sleeping infant, he has to struggle not to recoil from the physical contact and it occurs to him that perhaps this was why she didn’t want John taking the infant from him. Rude, he thinks, and gets to his feet. “I’ll keep you posted about the case,” he tells John and goes to collect his coat. 

“Wait!” John hurries after him into the front hall. “Sherlock – about tomorrow – are you still planning to go back to Bart’s?” 

Sherlock frowns. “Well – yes,” he says. “I know you would rather I didn’t go alone, but as you’re working and we’ve been sent a clue, I don’t see what choice that leaves me.”

“Couldn’t Mycroft go with you?” John asks in what is surely pure desperation. 

Sherlock makes a derisive sound. “My brother, leave his security cavern and involve himself in tawdry ‘legwork’?” He carefully refrains from specifying anything further about Mycroft’s location, given Mary’s presence and listening ear in the next room. “That’s reaching.” 

John struggles internally for a moment, then says, “All right, then, fine! I’ll go with you!” 

Sherlock lifts his brows dubiously. “I thought you had to work.” 

“I do, but you can’t go back there on your own,” John says angrily. “You know very well that it’s almost certainly a trap!” 

“It could be,” Sherlock argues, “but I still need to go. I’ve already not gone tonight to appease you. I’m definitely going tomorrow. You’re welcome to come, if you’re able. I would like it if you did, but I’m aware that you have other priorities, and I – ”

“Stop. Just stop it,” John says, and the anger in his tone gives Sherlock pause. (What is John so angry about? Has he not been accommodating enough of his lack of availability? Made allowance for his new priorities? Their interaction over the return of the SIG is still mystifying to him.) John glares at him. “I have a minor surgery to perform in the morning that can’t be put off. Can it wait until the afternoon, at least?” 

Sherlock hesitates. He would really prefer to go as soon as it’s light enough to see clearly, but he would also genuinely like John to be there when he goes, especially as he does have a rather good point about the likelihood of it being a trap. “All right,” he concedes. “Text me when you’re available.” 

“I will.” John’s anger fades as quickly as it flared and he yawns again. 

“John,” Mary calls from the sitting room. “Are you going to put her to bed, or are you leaving that to me, too?” 

John sighs deeply. “No, I said I would do it,” he calls back. He lowers his voice again. “I’ve got to, er…” he says, gesturing toward the sitting room. 

“I know.” Sherlock cannot quite help sounding a touch grim. “You’d best go and do that, then.”

“Tomorrow,” John says. 

Sherlock turns to go, then stops and turns back. “I’m glad I met your daughter,” he says, a bit stiffly, but he managed to say it. 

John smiles, but it’s somewhat sad. (Again, why?) “I’m glad, too,” he says. “Bye.” 

Sherlock turns, opens the door, and goes. 

*** 

He spends the night tossing and turning, dozing fitfully and dreaming of John lying on the sofa in the house he shares with Mary, the dream coming in pieces, no solid narrative to link them together. Toward dawn he manages to sleep for two unbroken hours, then wakes when his phone beeps with a text. Groggily Sherlock reaches for it, hoping that it’s John. 

It’s not. The text is from Molly, and is quite short. _Could you ring me at the lab when you’ve got a moment? Thanks._

Sherlock frowns at the message, cobwebs clearing slowly from his brain. He yawns, then decides to get it over with, wrapping his sheet around himself and sitting up against the headboard. He presses down the number for Bart’s lab and waits. She answers after three rings, sounded flustered, as ever. “Molly,” he says. “Sherlock Holmes. You said to phone.” 

“Yes – hello, Sherlock. Thanks for ringing back so quickly. Have you got a moment now?” She sounds hesitant and the hesitancy is annoying. 

“Why would I have chosen to call now if it was a bad time for me?” he asks rhetorically. “What is it?”

“Yes – of course, silly of me!” Molly clears her throat. “Er, you wanted me to have your brother’s tech man have a look at our system, and he has, and I’m afraid it’s not very good news.” She pauses a moment, as though allowing him space to comment there if he wishes, but when he doesn’t, she goes on. “You remember that I told you we had to have the entire system replaced sometime right around Moriarty’s death?”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, unable to mask his impatience. “You said you couldn’t remember whether that happened before or after the fact.” 

“Well, it was before,” Molly tells him. “One week before. The new system was installed exactly one week before that all happened, with you and him. It was installed by our own team, specifically overseen by one technician.”

She pauses, and Sherlock gets it in a rush of understanding. “Jim from IT,” he says flatly. 

“Right in one,” Molly confirms, a wince in her tone. “He was calling himself Jim Morris officially. That’s how I met him, at least, and that’s what it said on the payroll. So if he was already planning this, then he knew exactly whose body was going to take his place in my morgue, and he’d already changed all of his own information in terms of dental records, blood type, all of that. He had sole access to certain systems and there was never any reason to double-check his work; he’d always been reliable. I’m sorry, Sherlock.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sherlock says woodenly. 

“I also asked his former supervisor when he quit, exactly, and it seems it was almost immediately after the installation,” Molly continues, still sounding apologetic. “Apparently he just – didn’t turn up for work one morning and when his boss called, he only got voice mail and the messages were never returned. They never saw him again after that.”

Of course they hadn’t. “I hadn’t realised he was still employed at the hospital at that point,” Sherlock says. “How did they account for the months he was imprisoned by the MI5?”

“I asked about that, too, and it seems they never connected the dots that he was actually who he was,” Molly says. “Moriarty, I mean. Though they did say that he took two months of compassionate leave when his brother died.”

“Did he ever mention a brother to you?” Sherlock asks. 

“No. Never. He told me he was an only child,” Molly says. “Though of course, he could have been lying about that, too.” She hesitates again. “So – I suppose that confirms it, then? Moriarty is still alive?” 

“Yes,” Sherlock says, his voice expressionless. A moment goes by, then he says it again. “Yes. Thank you, Molly.” He ends the call and puts the phone face down. Should he tell John now? Yes. Perhaps. John should know what he’s potentially getting into if they go back to Bart’s today. (Should he warn Molly? But no; surely Moriarty wouldn’t be targeting her. He barely registered her existence except as a means of getting to Sherlock himself.) He picks up the phone again, thinks for a moment or two, then types: _Molly confirmed that the corpse they thought to be Moriarty’s was likely not his after all. Means he could still be alive. Just so you know._

He sends the message to John and waits, watching the screen to see when it will be marked as read. That happens a moment or two later, then the symbol of John typing appears. The message comes quickly. _Fantastic. That’s just wonderful. I suppose you’re still determined to go back to Bart’s today?_

Sherlock texts back immediately. _Yes. As soon as you’re free._

He can practically hear John sighing from there, but John texts back, _I’ll let you know, then. Don’t go without me!_

_I won’t._

Sherlock gets up and walks into the shower, still disoriented from lack of sleep. He showers slowly and thinks of the broken pieces of dream and of the previous evening, of Mary’s odd reaction to seeing him holding her child. It was almost as though she was reacting out of fear. Does she see him as a threat, then? Does she honestly think that he would harm her child? That he would harm _John’s_ child? It fits, he supposes, rinsing out his hair. It would make sense if she were paranoid. She did shoot him in what could more easily be construed as an overt attempt on his life than otherwise, despite his attempts to do that very thing. Anyone else might want revenge, and perhaps it’s odd to her that he hasn’t sought it. That he seemingly took her side, argued with John not to leave her the night he found out whose bullet it was that the surgeons had dug out of his heart. On the surface, he’s barely seen Mary since the reconciliation on Christmas Day. During the autumn he never saw her once during the months that John was staying with him and caring for the slow-to-heal wound. When they came to see him off, Mary was all lightness and casual teasing, not a word said about Magnussen or her having shot him. Just that bit about keeping John entertained, subtle as that had been. Perhaps that had been a thank you in a(n extremely) roundabout way. After all, that was what he had given them: another chance at having a life together, one not shadowed by Mary’s criminal record or the threat of exposure to the very authorities with which Sherlock and John have always aligned themselves. It was him making that choice again, the choice to not attempt to fight a losing battle for John. John had made his own decision and made it once again on Christmas Day, so Sherlock did the only good thing left to him to do: he helped John have that which he’d chosen. So, given that, does Mary really consider him a threat now? The idea is almost comical, but Sherlock isn’t laughing. 

He switches off the water and dries himself. The fatigue is still there but the heat of the water helped. Caffeine will help still further. He dresses, putting on a standard suit and a midnight blue shirt the colour of John’s eyes when he’s angry, then makes a pot of coffee and drinks half of it while scanning disinterestedly through the papers. 

The day passes slowly, but John finally texts around half-past one – sooner than Sherlock was actually expecting. _I’m ready. Should I come to the flat first? I’m already on my way there._

No point arguing, then, Sherlock decides, his adrenaline spiking as he leaps into action. He scrambles out of his chair and simultaneously texts back _Good_ while flying around the flat. There is the Browning he keeps behind the mirror above the mantelpiece. He debates for a moment. Should he bother taking it? He’ll have John there. He always preferred John’s SIG, anyway. He decides to leave it and hastily checks his hair instead. It will have to do. Socks and shoes, then. Yes. He pulls on his coat in a swirl of dark wool and clatters down the stairs to wait for John outside. It takes ten minutes more before the taxi arrives, minutes he spends drumming his fingers against his coat in the cool January air. It swings over to the kerb at last and John opens the door. 

“Should I bother getting out, or are we keeping the cab?” he asks. 

Sherlock is already moving toward the vehicle. “Keep it,” he instructs, and John shifts to the far side to allow him to get in at the kerb. He pulls the door closed. “Bart’s Hospital,” he says. “And hurry.”

The driver pulls away with haste, but now it’s John who is drumming his fingers against his knee. “I came as quickly as I could,” he says stiffly. “Sorry I kept you waiting.” 

Sherlock frowns. “No need to apologise,” he says neutrally. “How was the surgery?”

“Fine.” John’s clipped tone states clearly that he does not want to discuss it. “What’s the plan?” 

Sherlock shrugs. “Go inside, check with security for anomalies, check the roof, I thought.” 

“Fine.” 

Sherlock pauses, glances at the driver, and lowers his voice. “Do you have – ”

“Yes.” 

“Good.” Sherlock subsides into silence for the duration of the ride and John doesn’t try to break it, scowling out his window. They arrive and rush in through the main entrance (no point dragging John through A&E again). Sherlock goes to the security desk and questions the guard seated behind it thoroughly, to the other’s confusion. 

“Are you with the police?” he asks, frowning. 

“Yes.” Sherlock doesn’t hesitate to lie and pulls out one of Lestrade’s badges. “DI Lestrade, and this is rather classified. I’ll have to ask you not to speak to anyone about this. Any breaches in your system within the past twenty-four hours or so?” 

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” the guard tells him. He squints at a screen. “There are always short outages, but it’s normal. At least since the new system was installed a couple of years ago.” 

Sherlock pins him with a steely gaze. “How long do said outages normally last?” 

The guard shrugs. “Fifteen, twenty minutes at the longest. It’s never the entire system at once, just a camera or a group of cameras here or there. It’s a bug. We’re working on it,” he adds, sounding a touch nervous and glancing at John. 

“Work faster,” John says shortly. “This sort of thing is really unacceptable. You have a priority to keep your patients safe.” 

“Yes, sir. Of course.” The guard squirms. “I’ll – er, pass that on to my boss.” 

“Do that.” Sherlock turns away and makes for the lifts and the roof. The lifts only go to the second highest storey; the last is accessed through a secured stairwell, but as he learned three years ago, it’s rarely locked. It’s not locked now. He jogs up the stairs, John following like a dark-jacketed shadow, silent as ever. Sherlock pushes open the door leading out onto the roof and for a moment is assailed by his own vicious memories of this place. The trap closing in around him. The sickening fear that it wouldn’t work, that none of his potential escapes would fall into place at the right moment. That John would die for it. He clears his throat and swallows, moving away from the door. John lets it close behind him with a thunk. 

“Was he here waiting for you, that day?” he asks, his voice dull. 

Sherlock turns back to look at him, the wind stronger up here and ruffling John’s hair. “Yes. I’d told him to meet me here.”

John’s jaw clenches and it looks as though there are several things he would like to say but is restraining himself from doing so. Instead he looks away and says, “So where did he do it? Shoot himself in the head?” 

Sherlock leads the way, surreptitiously glancing around at the neighbouring rooftops, just in case, not that he expects he’d be able to see anything. “It was just here,” he says, pointing at the place where Moriarty was supposed to have died. There is no outline, no blood, nothing to mark the place but his own memory. 

John comes over to stand near him, gazing silently at the place, apparently lost in his own thoughts. 

The door to the roof opens again. They both look over. It’s a security guard and he looks displeased. “Excuse me, what’s this?” he wants to know, coming over. “This is restricted access, gents. You set off an alarm back there. Can’t be up here, I’m afraid.”

“Sorry,” John says instantly, not sounding for a moment as though he means it. “This is part of an investigation, however. We have clearance to be here.” 

“Says who?” The guard isn’t having this. 

Sherlock pulls out the badge again. “Detective Inspector Lestrade,” he says, brandishing it. “Metropolitan Police, Homicide Division.” 

“Very funny. I know what DI Lestrade looks like, and you’re not him.” The guard glares at him. “What’s this, then? A prank? A dare? Or are you two really impersonating police officers?” 

John looks at Sherlock, then says, “Look, we don’t want any trouble. We’ll just be going.” 

“This way, then,” the guard says, gesturing toward the door. “You’re lucky you didn’t get stranded up here, frankly; we normally keep that door locked.” 

Sherlock does not volunteer the thought that there are other ways down from this rooftop. 

“The view’s nice, though,” John offers, jollying the guard along. 

He snorts from just behind Sherlock’s right shoulder. “Oh, the view’s just fine, but – ” Suddenly there is a bloom of warmth at Sherlock’s side, just below the rib cage, a hot, sticky rush of pain following the next moment “ – it’s not yours to enjoy, I’m afraid.” 

Sherlock opens his mouth to answer but nothing comes out. He staggers to his knees. “John – ” It’s a croak. 

John turns immediately. “Sherlock! What – ” 

A shot rings out, then another. John is shouting and Sherlock feels himself fall forward onto his hands and knees, one hand going instinctively to his side. It comes away red, even through his coat and his vision blurs. 

“You stabbed him!” John is furious, and another shot rings out, closer by. Sherlock hears the weight of the guard slump to the concrete not far from him. 

“John…” It’s weak, and drowned out by another shot from far off. 

John shoots back, swearing and ducking. “Sherlock – I’ve got to get you out of here! There’s a sniper, at least one – ” He shoots again, and the other shooter subsides. “Finally,” John mutters, dropping into a crouch in front of him. “Are you all right? Let me see it!” 

“John…” He barely feels the word leave his mouth, a red mist forming over his vision. 

“Shit!” John is furious, peeling the coat back to have a look at the blood welling through Sherlock shirt. He rips the buttons open and swears again. “It might not be that bad, but you’re losing a ton of blood,” he mutters. “I’m taking your shirt off.” 

Sherlock nods and does his best to help John get it off him, though John scolds him not to move throughout. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. 

John makes a sound of disbelief. “ _Now_ you’re sorry,” he says. “For Christ’s sake, Sherlock! I _told_ you not to come here, but you just wouldn’t bloody listen!” He tears the shirt into strips and bundles a makeshift bandage around Sherlock’s torso. “I’ve got to get you downstairs for stitches,” he says. “Can you walk? I’m going to get you on your feet now. Just pray that I actually got that sniper.” 

Sherlock makes no response; his head is swimming and he feels nauseated by the sudden movement. His legs feel like water and he feels himself slumping against John. 

John’s arms come around him and then he’s being scooped off his feet. “Never mind,” John says, still angry on the surface, but there’s something gentler beneath it.

His doctor voice, Sherlock thinks vaguely, hardly aware that John is shouldering through the metal door and hurrying down the stairs as though Sherlock’s weight is of no consequence. He closes his eyes against the nausea (vomiting on John would be spectacularly awful) and does his best to hold on. There is a stomach-swooping journey in a lift. Sherlock can feel John’s heart pounding through his chest, through his silence. Then they’re in a noisy corridor and John is nearly running. Another three sets of doors and the noise increases. _A &E_, Sherlock thinks. _Oh no. Sorry, John._

“Can I help you?” The calm tones of a trained A&E admitting nurse address John. 

“Yes, I need – ” John stops, his breath drawing in sharply. “Sherlock. Shit.” 

Sherlock opens his eyes. “Wha – ” He stops. 

Seated just beside the security guard’s desk in a plastic visitor’s chair is none other than Moriarty, his dark eyes glinting above the magazine open on his knee, a smirk playing about his mouth. Dark pea coat, just like the day they were both supposed to have died. Sherlock’s chest contracts, air leaving his lungs in a vacuum. John turns abruptly and lurches toward the doors, leaving the nurse hanging. Cold air washes over Sherlock again, shirtless as he is. (Where is his coat? Did John retrieve it?) Next thing he knows, he is being dumped into the backseat of a car like a sack of potatoes and a door slams next to him. Then the door on the far side opens and John gets in. “Baker Street, 221B,” he snaps at the driver. “As fast as you can; it’s an emergency.” 

The car lurches forward and Sherlock feels sick again. Then John is there, a hand pressing down on the stab wound, his face very close but not looking at him. “Hold on,” he mutters. “We’ll get you home. I’ll stitch you up myself. We couldn’t stay at the hospital.”

“Not with – ” His voice is thready and weak. 

“Shh. Don’t try to talk. No, not with him there. It’s not safe. It’s fine. I’ll do it myself. I’ve got everything I need in the loo.” John keeps his hand down on the wound for the rest of the short drive, all but throws money at the driver, then pushes Sherlock’s door open and somehow clambers out over him, getting Sherlock out as he does so. The trip up the stairs is a blur, John apologising gruffly as Sherlock’s ankles bash into the banister rail more than once. 

“I can walk,” he mumbles once they’re inside the flat. “I think.” 

“Sure?” John lets him down then. “Come on. Loo.” He supports Sherlock down the corridor. 

Sherlock keeps his own hand pressed to the bandage and gets himself into the bathroom. “Where do you want me?” he asks. 

“Just lean up against the sink, if you can manage it,” John says. “I’ll need to clean it first.” 

“All right.” Sherlock watches, clarity returning slowly. He must not have lost that much blood after all, he thinks as John prepares a local anaesthetic and slaps down medical supplies onto the counter. Gauze, antiseptic, a needle for sutures, various ointments. 

“Let’s a have look, then.” John is all business, but Sherlock senses that the anger is still there, and not particularly far beneath the surface. No: not just anger. Fury. John is blazingly furious and it’s radiating from him in spikes, even if his hands and tone are steady. “This is going to sting,” John says, not looking him in the eye. He pats down alcohol or something and Sherlock hisses in pain. John’s eyes flick sharply up to his and for a moment Sherlock thinks he’s about to say something to match the look on his face, but he doesn’t. Instead he picks up a hypodermic needle, fusses with it for a minute, then says, “You’re used to these by now, I’m sure.” 

It’s just as sharp but this particular barb does sting. Sherlock grits his teeth together as John slides the needle between two of his ribs, then gives him something to swallow. “What is it?” Sherlock asks, looking at the two small, unmarked pills in his palm. 

“Just take it,” John says shortly. “Before you drop them.” 

The anger is doing its work in terms of clearing Sherlock’s head. Why, _why_ is John so angry with him? Surely he can see that they have to look for Moriarty, have to stop him. And John has been this way ever since Sherlock walked off the plane. He does not understand and hates not understanding. Hates John being this angry with him. He swallows the pills in obedient silence. 

“Put your hand on your head and keep your arm out of the way while I’m stitching you up,” John tells him, his tone brooking no refusal. “Good. Now don’t move.” He peers at the wound for a moment or two, then makes a more satisfied sound. “Actually, this isn’t that deep.” 

“I could have told you that,” Sherlock says, gazing at the frosted glass in the panes of the door separating his bedroom from the bath. 

John makes a derisive sound. “When, while you were passing out in the corridors of Bart’s?”

Sherlock doesn’t respond, wincing instead as John pushes the needle into his skin and begins to sew. The anaesthetic is working but he can still feel it. 

“That hurt?” The question is like a challenge. 

Sherlock doesn’t rise to it. “Not particularly.” 

“Good.” This is grim and John relapses into tense silence as he works. Sherlock tries to breathe shallowly and keep his balance against the counter. John would be even more cross if he were to topple over in the middle of his stitches. He was hardly aware of his semi-nudity before, but here in the enclosed space of the bathroom, he is suddenly very conscious of it. He can smell John’s hair, his head bent just below Sherlock’s chin. He hopes that whatever John can smell of him is inoffensive. (What does fear smell like? Or would John detect rather his confidence in John to get him away from the sniper, out of the hospital, away from Moriarty?) 

“Did you bring my coat?” he asks, though it’s not really that important. 

“No. We’ll get someone to pick it up. Your brother or someone. I was more concerned with getting you out of shooting range.” John cuts the thread, knots it with an unpleasant amount of yanking, then carefully tapes down a sterile gauze pad over it. “It’s not deep but you’ll need to keep still,” he says, still terribly brusque. “Unless, of course, you plan on risking your bloody life again before the day is out.” 

Sherlock stares at him, stung again by the sheer amount of hostility in John’s voice. John always used to curse him out for being careless or for taking unnecessary (in his eyes) risks, but it was never like this, the bitterness so thick in his voice. “John, I don’t understand,” he says, finally just asking, and the question sounds partly petulant and partly plaintive to his own ears. “Why are you so angry with me?” 

John hurriedly sweeps his supplies back into their box and stows it all under the sink again, turning on the hot water and washing his hands with furious speed. “Why did you go back there? You _knew_ it was a trap,” he says, his jaw clenched, deliberately avoiding Sherlock’s face. 

Sherlock lowers his arm with caution and turns his head toward John. “Yes, I knew that that was a possibility, but you know as well as I do that it was also a clue and one of the only leads we’ve got so far during this rather important case, and that I couldn’t have possibly _not_ gone. But it’s not just this – you’ve been like this since the day I didn’t end up going to Serbia.” He waits for John to deny it and he doesn’t, his face set and closed as he switches off the tap and spends an inordinately long time drying his hands. “Are you going to tell me – ”

“I’m just sick of you acting as though it doesn’t affect anyone else when you decide to throw your life away!” The angry words explode out of John with the weight of weeks or months or possibly years of frustration behind them. 

Sherlock is startled by his vehemence. “I had to go back there, today,” he says slowly. “But before, when did I…?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” The question comes at him with the strength of a fastball whipped into his chest, the same amount of frustration and anger driving it. John is glaring at him, his fists balled tightly at his sides. 

Confusion. “Why didn’t I tell you wh – ”

“Your brother,” John says, the words coming out in a snarl, “told me as your plane was landing again that you weren’t supposed to have come back from Serbia. He told me that you were supposed to die there on some sort of fucking suicide mission. That you chose that over life in prison. _Why didn’t you tell me?_ ”

Sherlock stares back at him, his mouth opening a little, stunned. “I – thought you knew,” he says stupidly. “John – I thought it was known to everyone there. I even said it in front of you – I asked Mycroft if, given that it was the last conversation I would ever have with you, whether we could have a moment alone. I thought you heard that.” 

John shakes his head. “No. I didn’t. And that’s not the same thing as just telling me directly. You would have just flown off without a single fucking word to let me know that you were going to your death. That I was never going to see you again.” 

Sherlock feels his own temper stir. “I might have found a way to escape,” he says curtly. “And it’s hardly as though you asked, either.”

“I shouldn’t have had to!” John shouts, his face turning red. “Why couldn’t you have just been open with me for once? Why do you always keep me in the bloody dark? Why do you always forget about me? Why doesn’t it matter to you that I know these things, like that you weren’t fucking _dead_ for those two years, or that you really were going to die this last time? Why don’t I matter to you at _all?_ ”

Sherlock’s mouth drops open again. John has it all so completely wrong that he doesn’t even know where to begin. “I had just shot a man,” he says. “Did you think they were just going to let me off the hook? I’m afraid that only works for your wife – which was why I did it in the first place!” 

John’s face crinkles into frustrated confusion. “ _What?_ What does that even mean? And that, by the way, is exactly what _I_ mean! You just treat your own life with no regard whatsoever without ever stopping to think for one second how your stupid decisions affect the people around you! You never once thought how I might feel about you getting hauled off to prison, what it might mean to _me_ to lose you again! Does nothing I ever say to you even register? Or do I just not matter to you at all?” 

Sherlock feels dizzy. “You have the wrong end of the stick,” he says, finally getting a word in edgewise. “You’ve got it completely backwards. You matter more than anyone else. That’s why I’ve done everything I’ve done in the past three years.” 

John stares at him, non-comprehension all over his face. “ _What?_ Sherlock – ”

“Everything,” Sherlock repeats. “There never seemed to be a good moment to tell you this. I should have told you from the beginning, but – with Mary there, somehow I never – I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t. I should have told you: it was a trap the last time I went onto the rooftop of Bart’s Hospital, too. I invited Moriarty up there thinking that I had outwitted him, that I could escape whatever he’d set up for me in terms of my public downfall. But he beat me: he had snipers positioned to kill you, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade, and the only way to get them not to shoot was for them to see me jump. I sent you away from the hospital partly to get you away from the sniper who was watching you at the hospital and partly to be with Mrs Hudson because we didn’t know who was on her, Mycroft and I. I wanted her to be with you. But you figured it out and walked right back into the line of fire. I had no choice but to jump. And I had no way of knowing whether or not you were still being watched until I found all of the information, found out who was all in on Moriarty’s plan. That’s why I couldn’t tell you that I was alive. I just couldn’t take the chance with your life. I was always sorry that it took me so long, though.”

John appears to be breathing with difficulty. He stares at Sherlock in both shock and disbelief. “Why did you never tell me?” he manages to ask, some of the heat fading from his voice. 

Sherlock shrugs (gingerly, given his new stitches). “I just couldn’t seem to find the right moment, I suppose.”

“And Magnussen?” John’s forehead is still creased with confusion. “Why did you shoot him? You never had to do that. I never wanted that.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “As long as he was in your life, he would have been a threat. Mary had already gone after him once. I don’t know whether she truly is starting a fresh leaf or not, but as long as Magnussen was there, she would have needed to be on her guard. And you, too. If Mary had been arrested, it would have ruined your life. I had already done that once, so I couldn’t – ” His words seem to get stuck in his throat. He swallows with difficulty. 

John’s eyes soften. “No,” he says. “You saved it, Sherlock.”

He has to go on, though. Finish the explanation. “And Serbia – I couldn’t tell you directly,” he says thickly. “I didn’t want to make you say goodbye. I thought it was – kinder.” Suddenly a wave of sleep swims over him, swamping his mind and limbs, clouding over his thoughts. Alarm bells begin to clang in his head. It’s been about twenty minutes since he swallowed those two innocuous-looking pills. “John – why am I – I don’t want – ”

“Oh – ” Suddenly John looks guilty. “I’m sorry, Sherlock – that was morphine that I gave you. I’m sorry. Come on, let’s get you to bed before it knocks you out completely.” 

“I don’t want to sleep now,” Sherlock repeats, aware that the words are coming out half-garbled as John’s arm comes around his back and draws him into the bedroom. He is half-led, half-pushed onto the bed, eased carefully down onto his back to avoid jolting the stab wound on his right, but he catches John by the wrist. “This isn’t finished,” he says, and it sounds like pleading. “We’re not done talking about this. Don’t go – I need to tell you – ”

“All right,” John says, cutting into his stream of anxious words. “I won’t go. We’ll finish this. But you need to stay still and this is the best way to get you to do it.” 

“Don’t – just for once, stay here – don’t go back to – ” It’s nonsense and he’s babbling but it can’t be prevented. 

“I won’t,” John says again. “I promise. I won’t leave.” There is a slight shift as his weight comes down onto the edge of the bed. He pulls his wrist from Sherlock’s limp hands and strokes his hair back from his forehead. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake.” 

Sherlock wants to say something else, wants to finish explaining himself now that the chance has finally arisen, but it’s too late. The siren song of sleep is pulling him into its depths, its tentacles all-pervasive and inescapable. Twilight washes over his senses and he knows no more. 

*** 

When he wakes, he doesn’t know what time it is. He has turned onto his left side and the blanket from the end of the bed has been draped over him, though he’s otherwise on top of the bedding. He opens his eyes and sees John. The room is dark – it must be the middle of the night. John is asleep, facing him, turned onto his side and under the same blanket. (He didn’t leave.) Sherlock blinks, trying to clear his head, but this thought repeats itself again and again: John didn’t leave. He promised to stay and he stayed. Right here. In bed next to him. Sherlock watches his face and thinks back over the argument they had. John knows now. He must know now. All of it. Why he did all of it. He must have deduced by now what that means he means to Sherlock. It’s the opposite of nothing. John is everything to him. Everything that matters, at least. 

John’s eyes open without warning and find his at once. He blinks, focusing, his gaze never leaving Sherlock’s. (Should he say something? Sherlock wonders. Perhaps he should, but nothing comes to mind.) John searches his face, and Sherlock feels everything that they did manage to say before the morphine stole the rest of it away go through John’s mind. (Will he speak first?) John doesn’t say anything, though. Instead, he puts his hand on Sherlock’s upper arm and it’s very, very warm, and the warmth of it seems to unlock something that was stuck within Sherlock. Still looking intently into his eyes, John strokes Sherlock’s bare arm, and it feels like an invitation. 

Sherlock surges forward without thinking and puts his arms around John, hugging him tightly to himself. Nothing rational can possibly explain the impulse, but his relief that John finally knows what and how he feels and still hasn’t left, that he’s stayed, unafraid of what being found in bed with Sherlock might look like or make either of them think – and it’s also the relief that things between them are finally all right again. John responds instantly, his own arms coming tightly around Sherlock’s back and they lie there on their sides, clutching at each other. Sherlock’s face is buried in John’s shoulder and John’s must be squashed between Sherlock’s neck and the pillows but he isn’t complaining. Both sets of hands are rubbing over each other’s backs, the hug tightening and releasing and tightening again as though constantly trying to re-establish itself. It is instantly the best thing Sherlock has ever felt or experienced in the whole of his life: the feeling of being in John’s arms and having John in his, and the longer it goes on, the more deeply he craves it. He can hear himself breathing, can hear the desperation in it. All he needed was for John to understand that he was the centre, not the margin. Not the left-out, left-behind, cast-off – but the very epicentre of his universe. Belatedly he realises that John is breathing just as hard, as though gasping for very relief that the two of them are finally all right again. 

Some instinct prompts Sherlock to pull back a little, just enough to look John in the eyes. The eye contact goes through him like a bolt of lightning. He closes the space between them and carefully puts his lips on John’s, gently, tentatively, and to his relief, John responds immediately. A small sound escapes through his nose and his arms and lips both tighten, his mouth forming a kiss shape in return, and this becomes the new best thing Sherlock has ever felt. John shifts even closer to him, his arms locked around Sherlock’s back and shoulders. Sherlock notices only much later that John was careful to avoid his wound. He presents no objection to being kissed whatsoever, to Sherlock’s further (dizzying) relief, but kisses back again and again and again, their lips parting and meeting again, over and over. Sherlock feels drunk; his entire body is alive to the root of every hair on every inch of his skin. He hears himself make a sound he is unable to forestall and kisses John harder, more insistently, desperately hungry for it, for anything and everything that John will let him have, let him give. John’s lips open first, catching at Sherlock’s lower one and sucking it. Sherlock feels a flush of heat sweep through his body and follows John’s lead, kissing back and trying not to suck John’s breath from his lungs. He catches on quickly, gets the hang of breathing through his nose and resumes kissing with renewed assurance. He has never in all his life kissed any one person as much as this and never this way (never saw the appeal, but he was an idiot, clearly), and it’s exhilarating. He can feel his heart thundering in his own chest, feel John’s pounding through flesh and bone and he craves still more. Then John’s tongue slips into his mouth and strokes against his and Sherlock nearly loses the ability to think entirely. The heat prickling through his frame swoops southward and concentrates itself immediately and intensely in his genitals and he feels himself hardening against John’s body, to his own embarrassment. John does not appear to be put off, however – they’re kissing even harder than they were before, tongues still rubbing together and Sherlock’s hunger for John carves a hole in him so large that they could both fall into it and keep falling for an eternity, he thinks. He is clutching John with the strength of a drowning man as they kiss and kiss, John leaning over him, his hands roaming beyond his own control, grasping at John’s back and suddenly he desperately wishes that John were shirtless, too. 

John’s hands slide down to grip his arse and Sherlock moans without meaning to. John turns him the rest of the way onto his back and relinquishes his mouth for a moment, hauling his jumper and t-shirt wordlessly over his head as though he heard Sherlock’s unspoken wish. He bends and puts his mouth on Sherlock’s again, and this time he moves against Sherlock and Sherlock feels it, that John is aroused, too. The knowledge alone is astounding and so arousing that it causes a line of sweat to break out on his forehead. He has never wanted so badly, never in his life. Not even during withdrawal. He is gasping, his hands going instinctively to John’s arse and gripping it, and John groans into his mouth. He breaks away and transfers his mouth instead to Sherlock’s neck and throat and face, his hips twisting and driving against Sherlock’s, and it feels so good that Sherlock doesn’t know where to leave himself. John slips a hand between them to twist the button out of Sherlock’s trousers. “Can I – ?” he asks, his breath hot on Sherlock’s neck and Sherlock nods fervently. 

Between John’s hands pulling and Sherlock kicking, he gets out of his trousers in seconds, then pushes insistently at John’s. John makes a noise of enthusiastic acquiescence and gets his jeans off in what might be record time. He takes it all off, his underwear, too, and Sherlock swallows down a mouthful of saliva at the implications of this. His own erection is making a tent of his undergarments, ridiculous and obvious and he knows without question that he has never experienced desire to this degree of intensity. His very skin feels as though it’s on fire and he wants so desperately that he is incapable of doing anything but trying to touch John, asking with his hands for what he has never put into speech before. John is lying on him, kissing him with a passion Sherlock honestly did not know that he felt, his erection thick and hard against him, separated only by the thin layer of Sherlock’s underwear, touching his own through it. “John – please!” he gasps out, hardly aware that his voice is shaking with need. 

John makes another sound that seems to signify heartfelt agreement and claws Sherlock’s underwear down, pulling them from around his ankles and flinging them across the room. Then he’s back, settling himself against Sherlock’s body, naked from head to toe, and when his penis touches Sherlock’s, Sherlock’s breath sucks in and seems to get stuck in his lungs, carbon dioxide burning holes through the tissue. He feels more than he can seem to contain, physically or emotionally, and it’s overwhelming. John digs his arms under his back and kisses the throat Sherlock has bared in throwing back his head, and the breath comes rushing out and he gasps and presses John to himself as though trying to fuse their bodies together. He lowers his chin and John kisses him again, open-mouthed and utterly sensuous. His hips begin to move, his erection sliding hard against Sherlock’s and Sherlock’s entire body trembles. “Have you got – ” John murmurs, and some corner of Sherlock’s mind that still functions recognises what he’s asking for. 

“Drawer!” he gasps, and John kisses him again, barely shifting as he reaches for it. He fiddles with something, then the warmth of his palm closes around them both and begins to rub. Sherlock’s breath turns to fire in his lungs as pleasure more intense than he knew could exist sears through his body at the touch of John’s hand and the hard length of his erection stroking in counterpoint to his own. John leaves his mouth free to gasp helplessly and noisily and kisses his throat and neck instead as his fist strokes over them. His breath is shaking against Sherlock’s skin, too, as he thrusts against Sherlock faster and faster, his fist tight around them both. The pleasure is rising in a steady crescendo to unbearable, intolerable levels and he feels something akin to panic rising alongside it, but he is powerless to prevent the build or control any aspect of it in any way. “J – ” He cannot even form John’s name, but the attempt makes John moan and increase his speed still further, his fist rubbing furiously over mostly Sherlock now and Sherlock’s back arches up off the bed and it’s upon him, rushing through him and thundering in his ears. The peak grips every part of his body and wrings it tightly and then the pleasure turns incandescent and spikes blindingly, judders out of him in hot spurts, John’s fist squeezing and rubbing and he comes again, again, his abdomen hollowing and flexing as his thighs jerk against John’s, and then it’s John’s voice rising and getting caught in his throat, his hips stilling at last, his erection pulsing against Sherlock’s as his release spatters wetly over Sherlock’s belly. There’s another splatter and then John collapses onto him, face buried at the junction of Sherlock’s neck and shoulder, his back heaving, breath hot and wet on Sherlock’s skin. 

Sherlock puts his limp arms around John and thinks with wonder, _This just happened. It really happened._ He turns his head to press weak, panting kisses to John’s temple, his hands gentle on John’s back. 

After a few minutes, John lifts his head and looks down at him, then lowers his mouth and kisses him again, and if he regrets what just happened, it hasn’t registered yet, Sherlock thinks, hungrily kissing back for as long as it will last. The hunger hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it has only deepened. 

They kiss for a long time, not speaking, postponing the inevitable discussion and dissection and electing instead to just do this. Revel in it, and leave the questions and complications for some later point. His eyes are closed. It would definitely be preferable to avoid thinking about this at all. 

*** 

Sherlock wakes again not realising that he had fallen asleep. The stitches John put in are throbbing, but this is entirely secondary to the fact that John is sprawled across him in a relaxed tangle of limbs, his legs intertwined with Sherlock’s. He is breathing deeply and slowly, still asleep, his face turned sideways on Sherlock’s left shoulder. His left arm is stretched out across Sherlock’s upper chest as though warding him against some attack even in sleep. It is the best waking up that Sherlock has ever experienced, despite the stirrings of uneasiness making themselves known in his belly. It happened spontaneously in the middle of the night. The middle of the night is an entity unto itself, divorced from reality. It’s the hour of crime, of murders, as they both have ample cause to know. Of extramarital affairs. John has just cheated on Mary. Will he regret it now? Sherlock has no idea what time it is, how long they’ve slept. Late January sunlight is streaming in through the window and with it, the ephemeral, dreamy quality of the small hours of the night has disappeared. Sherlock thinks of it, of having opened his eyes, looking into John’s, and then just moving toward him without a word. And yet he is still here, naked and heavy and intensely beautiful, Sherlock thinks with a pang. (But will he be able to keep it? He rather doubts this.) 

John must have some sort of subliminal way of knowing that he is awake, because he stirs now, his breathing pattern changing as he wakes. Sherlock can also feel the weight of his genitals, semi-soft, semi-firm against his hipbone and noticing this is immediately arousing. He realises that he is nearly holding his breath, waiting for John to realise where he is and to react. John shifts and lifts his head a little, then makes a sound that could signify comprehension and puts his head down again. His left arm tightens a little. “Morning,” he says, the word slightly muffled against Sherlock’s shoulder. 

Relief. (Cautious relief, albeit.) “Good morning,” Sherlock says, his voice scratchy. Some impulse leads him to put his arms back around John again, so relieved is he that John hasn’t sprung in disbelieving haste and self-recrimination from his bed. He worries that it’s ridiculous, just hugging John like this, clinging to him, but John makes a deeply contented sound and hugs back, his arms digging beneath Sherlock’s back. They lie there holding each other tightly, neither one of them speaking, and Sherlock tries to forget how uneasy he feels and concentrates on losing himself in John’s embrace. 

John pulls back after a little and looks down into his eyes. “This is a nice way to wake up,” he says. “Sherlock – there’s still so much to say and I don’t even know where to start. Let me at least say that I get it now. I hope you know that. After the morphine knocked you out, it was still afternoon, so I had a lot of time to think, and it all just fell into place. I don’t know why I never saw it. I just never thought that you wanted – well, any of that, from me. I see why you did it all now. You were trying so hard to give me what you thought I wanted, without even thinking of yourself, and then I go and accuse you of being selfish and never thinking of me. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Sherlock tells him, his eyes searching John’s. “It’s not as though I ever said, either. I never told you about the snipers. I should have.” 

“And Magnussen – ” John’s face is pained. “I understand now. But just sacrificing yourself that way, for me – so that I could have this life with Mary, when you felt that way – Sherlock, I can’t even – I don’t know what to say. I – owe you so much more than I can ever – ”

“Don’t,” Sherlock says, trying to keep it from sounding like a plea. “Don’t – put it that way. I was just – doing what I thought you wanted. I had no idea that you ever wanted anything else from me, either. There never seemed to be any conflict, any – I don’t know. When you left, at Christmas – ”

“Stop.” John closes his eyes and puts his face down on Sherlock’s shoulder. “I don’t even want to think about that right now.”

Sherlock doesn’t know what to say to this. “All right,” he says slowly. “John… I – ”

John raises his face again and touches Sherlock’s lips with his thumb. “Look. I know there are about a thousand other things that need to be talked about now. But I don’t want this moment to be over yet. Last night was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced and I just don’t want to interrupt it with all the – the rest of it. Can we just – prolong it a little bit? I don’t want it to be over yet.” 

Sherlock searches his eyes, then nods. “Okay,” he says, hoping that John will kiss him, and he does. It’s long and slow and very, very sweet, and when it finishes he reaches for John and starts it again, his hands on John’s face. It’s a relief in a way, because he didn’t want this to be over yet, either, lying naked together, half-aroused and whatever discussion of the previous night potentially leaving them both unspent and unhappy. It feels better than anything in the world could – all of this, just being permitted to be with John this way. As they kiss, he can actively feel John’s penis growing harder still, and his own along with it, as though fuelled directly by John’s arousal. His body shifts and rises to press against John’s in spite of himself, unable to keep himself from reaching for it, for a repeat of the exquisite thing that happened between them during the night. The fact that John is even kissing him now is incredible. Sherlock cups the firm curves of his arse and squeezes. “I want to touch you,” he says between kisses, the admission low but just audible. “Show me how to – I want to make you feel – ”

John takes his hand and puts it between them on his erection. “Like that,” he says, kissing Sherlock on the chin. “The way you would do for yourself. That’s it. Nothing fancy to it.” 

Sherlock gropes around with his other hand for the tube of lubricant but John finds it first and presses it into his hand. “You have to tell me how,” he says, not elaborating. “Or if there’s – something else I should do – ”

“This is more than enough,” John assures him, his smile so warm that it makes Sherlock’s chest ache. He waits for Sherlock to deal with the tube and then groans when his hand curls around him again, his own erection ignored for the time being. “God, yes – just like that – oh – ” John pushes into his fist, and Sherlock figures out the rhythm quickly and matches his own movements to it. John’s sounds grow rapidly more enthusiastic and Sherlock digs the fingers of his other hand into the meat of John’s arse as he thrusts into Sherlock’s fist. John’s voice rises in both volume and pitch and then his entire body contracts and he comes, several shots of pearly white adding themselves to the crusted mess on Sherlock’s stomach. “Sorry,” John pants, and scrubs at it with a corner of the blanket that got kicked away during the night. 

“John – ” Witnessing John’s orgasm has made his need all the more urgent and Sherlock feels his legs trembling, his erection lying flat and flushed hard against his lower abdomen. He cannot keep the need from his voice, the strain of hunger to be touched again, brought to his climax again. 

John doesn’t make him wait. He props himself up on one elbow, smiles down into Sherlock’s face and begins to stroke him in long, smooth strokes. His palm is slick with lubricant transferred from his own body and that makes Sherlock’s arousal spike even further, knowing that. He can feel John’s heartbeat, still fast from his orgasm, and cannot take his eyes from John’s, his lips parted as he pants shallowly, his hips trembling and jerking upward as John caresses the most sensitive part of him. His breathing grows erratic as the pleasure builds again and suddenly he reaches for John, desperate and a bit out of control, and turns him most of the way onto his back, thrusting hard and rather wildly into his fist. He can hear the sounds he’s making, hungry and needy, and can’t help it. His eyes squeeze shut and John’s fist jerks hard over him, his erection as hard as it’s ever been, and then he’s coming and coming and it feels like too much; he can’t stop it gushing out of him and onto the warmth of John’s skin, but John is uttering encouragements, his fist still moving, coaxing the last of it out, and when the peak finally subsides, Sherlock’s body sags. Drops of his release are still winking out of him and John is still rubbing him gently and kissing his forehead and hot face. 

When Sherlock can, he puts a hand on John’s face and pulls him back to his mouth and kisses him for a long time. Their bodies settle together as it goes, Sherlock on his left side, lying in the crook of John’s right arm. He opens his eyes when it finishes, looking into John’s for a long moment, wondering what he will see. John gazes back at him, his face both sober and gentle, his hand caressing Sherlock’s face. 

“When did this start?” he asks. “When did you know that you felt this way? I honestly had no idea, Sherlock.” 

“I don’t know, exactly,” Sherlock says, his voice lower than it usually comes out. “Sometimes I think it was just always there.” 

“But it can’t have been, or surely we would have figured it out sooner,” John says, searching his eyes. “You jumped from Bart’s rooftop, not knowing for sure whether or not you’d survive, to save my life. Did you know by then?” 

Sherlock feels his lips compress a little but doesn’t break the eye contact. “I suppose I did,” he says. “I can’t pinpoint a time when it started, John. Honestly.” 

“But you definitely knew then?” John asks. 

“Perhaps not in such – concrete terms,” Sherlock concedes, uncertain of his footing in this area. He lacks the experience, the vocabulary to talk about this. “I definitely knew while I was away.”

John’s face looks pained. “And then you came back and I was with Mary.” 

“And seemed quite content to be, I thought,” Sherlock says, some of the resentment at John’s perceived lack of internal conflict leaking back into his tone. 

John shakes his head. “I can’t even tell you what I was feeling. I wouldn’t let myself. I don’t even know.” 

“We’re not very good at this, are we.” Sherlock surveys him. It’s difficult to bring this up while they’re lying together, naked and post-coital and comfortable, but it must be said. “You cheated on Mary.” 

John swallows. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I know.” He opens his mouth, reconsiders, then opens it again. “I didn’t lose you,” he says very directly, his eyes intent on Sherlock’s. His hand strokes over Sherlock’s upper arm. “That’s what mattered. I didn’t lose you again. God – I was so furious with you for not telling me, and so conflicted over having gone back to Mary when some part me always felt this way, always wanted this – ”

He stops and Sherlock is concerned. “How large a part?” he asks slowly. “Half? One third? Less?” 

“I – couldn’t say,” John says jerkily. “What I know right now is that I need this. Need you. I never thought I’d have it, that this would ever happen. But after you said all that, yesterday – suddenly it all just became very clear, how you must have felt, that you’d done all that for me, when you were right and I’d had the wrong end of the stick all along. Thinking I was unimportant to you. That’s what stung the worst – knowing that I’ve always felt this way about you, but that you didn’t think it worth telling me that you weren’t coming back this time. And then going off to Bart’s without so much as a thought for your own safety. I could have strangled you.” He smiles wryly an strokes Sherlock’s hair back now. 

“I love you,” Sherlock says, and it sounds stark and unadorned, but he can’t take it back now and doesn’t want to, anyway. 

John leans forward and kisses him for a long minute, his arm coming around Sherlock’s shoulders again. “I know,” he murmurs after. He kisses Sherlock’s chin and right cheek and his mouth again and repeats it. “I know. Now, at least.” 

Sherlock reaches for John to kiss him again, not pushing it, forcing him to say it back. He just needed John to hear it. The way John kisses him almost says it by itself. He never knew that John could be this tender, this gentle, and it undoes every string in his being and renders him helpless to do anything but bleed his own love all over John. He clutches at John, never minding the pull on his stitches. Eventually the kiss stops again, and he asks, “So what now? What happens now? Will we ever – ” He stops, suddenly unwilling to hear the inevitable answer, his throat closing. 

But John shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says, his eyes large and dark-blue and troubled. “I honestly don’t know, Sherlock. But this had to happen. Finally. It got pushed back and back and was misunderstood and misinterpreted for so long. I married someone else. Had a baby with someone else. Someone who shot you. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel, what I’m meant to do about this. I have a wife and a child. I know that they’re supposed to take first priority, but I – that’s why I was so stupid about taking my gun back, that day when you gave it to me. Sorry about that. I just – it was like you were refusing to acknowledge your importance to me, that I’d always _had_ someone to protect and defend, long before Mary and the baby were in my life. Either way, I don’t know what to do about that. But I just can’t ignore this any longer. Not now that we’ve finally found it. I can’t do without this, without you.”

This answer is both better than expected, yet still unsatisfactory and Sherlock tries not to sigh out loud. “All right,” he says slowly, very much aware that this has resolved nothing. “So – how do we proceed?”

“I don’t know,” John repeats. “I’ll obviously give it some very serious thought. I just haven’t had time to process this yet. I know how I feel, just not what I’m going to do about it.” He touches Sherlock’s face with a small, sturdy, beautiful hand. “I’m sorry. It’s a shit thing to do to you. About as shitty as it is for Mary.” 

“Will you tell her?” Sherlock asks, his eyes on John’s. 

“I don’t think so,” John says, his brow furrowing. “Maybe I should, but I don’t want to. Not now, with things still rather tenuous between us. Not before I’ve made some sort of decision, at least.” 

Sherlock thinks of the baby and silently tells himself again that he can never win this battle. Maybe if it were only Mary – but not with a baby in the picture. He does not say this out loud. Instead he says, “The incision hurts a little. I don’t want to be knocked out again, though…”

John gives him a rueful smile. “I’m sorry about the morphine. I won’t do that to you again. Rather unethical of me, honestly. I was just so angry with you and it’s always so difficult to keep you still when you need to be still.” 

“I hope I didn’t do them any damage with – all this,” Sherlock says diffidently, but there’s more in his tone and he knows it. 

John smiles and kisses him. After, he says, “That was spectacular, for the record. Both last night and this morning. Last night, though – that was magical. Out of this world.” 

A warm flush prickles over Sherlock’s chest. “Was it?” He feels slightly awkward asking this, but he has nothing with which to compare it and doesn’t know how to talk about this sort of thing. 

John kisses him again, soundly. “You were phenomenal,” he vows. “And I could kiss you for days. I never want to leave this bed. I told Mary yesterday that we were still on the case and that I wouldn’t be home or at the clinic today, but at some point I will need to actually do some of the things I’m supposed to do. I can’t stay here forever.” 

Sherlock feels immensely wistful. “I wish you could,” he says, not trying to hide it for once. 

John smiles. “We do have a case to solve,” he reminds Sherlock. “Moriarty, remember?” He pulls away. “I should check on your stitches but you might like to shower first,” he says, moving to the far side of the bed and getting out. 

Sherlock watches him move around the room, collecting his clothing. He makes no move to get up, though the bed has rather lost its appeal without John in it. “John – ” 

“Yeah?” John folds his shirt and lays it on the dresser, as though that will change it having spent the night lying crinkled on the floor. 

“Do you still love Mary?” Sherlock asks, very directly. It’s not a question he should ask, not something he’s allowed to know. But he wants to know nevertheless. 

John’s expression is pained. “Yes and no,” he says after a moment. “I don’t know, Sherlock. I can’t say just yet. I have to think about this.” He fidgets, then nods toward the bathroom. “Come shower with me?” he offers, but there’s something wincing in his tone, as though he fears that Sherlock will refuse to come without getting a proper answer to question. 

He doesn’t. (Pushing John now will accomplish nothing.) Sherlock gets carefully out of bed and moves toward the shower. 

*** 

Several days pass. John leaves him at the door to the flat an hour or two after their shared shower with a kiss that lingers on his lips for days after, and Sherlock resigns himself to getting to work on his own. John changed the bandaging over his stitches and gave him firm instructions to keep to the inside of the flat and not over-exert himself. By some tacit agreement, they did not speak any further about the state of what they are supposed to be to one another now, or of John’s marriage. His parting kiss was long and deep enough to be reassuring, yet the fact remains that John still left. They haven’t seen one another since then, and it’s been three days. 

Meanwhile, Sherlock phoned Mycroft and filled in the details of what transpired on the rooftop of Bart’s Hospital. Mycroft’s people have already recovered the bodies – those of the false security guard as well as that of the sniper on the top storey of an office building in the next street. Lestrade has been informed, but neither he nor the MI5 have yet identified either body, suggesting that they were little more than muscle for hire. Sherlock hears Moriarty’s voice in his head: _I don’t like to get my hands dirty._ Mycroft pieced most of it together based on CCTV footage, but had not known about Moriarty’s brief appearance in the waiting room of the A &E. Predictably it took place during a scheduled outage of the hospital’s internal security system, and he was not captured by any of their cameras. Naturally. 

“Also, we recovered your coat,” Mycroft told him on the phone. “There is a slash mark from where you were stabbed, as well as a good deal of blood. I’m having it cleaned and repaired.” 

“Thank you,” Sherlock said, meaning it, and Mycroft had made good on his word; a minion came to the door and delivered it the following day. Mrs Hudson answered the door, collected the coat, and brought it up to him, already fussing as she hung it behind the door. 

“No, you stay put,” she admonished him. “John tells me you got yourself stabbed!” 

“It was just a scratch,” Sherlock told her dismissively, though he was secretly pleased that John told her, pleased by John’s concern for once. 

“Nevertheless,” Mrs Hudson had said firmly. “You just sit right now and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

John is meant to be coming by later to check his stitches and change the bandaging again, though Sherlock is perfectly capable of doing the latter on his own. Either way, Sherlock is practically jumping out of his skin in nervous anticipation at seeing John again. Will he be the way he was the last time they saw one another? Will he have remembered himself (and his wedding vows) and keep a cautious distance, hiding behind professional demeanour? Will he be awkward about it? 

Sherlock looks around the sitting room. Mrs Hudson tidied it today, hoovering and picking up and generally making it look presentable again – folding blankets, straightening cushions and stacks of books and papers, taking away empty mugs and old newspapers and the like. He wonders how he could make it look more inviting, how he could tempt John to come back and stay for good. The problem is that it isn’t the flat. It isn’t a choice between the shabby, faded dignity of Baker Street versus the tasteful neutrals of South Hackney. It’s about him versus Mary-plus-child. It’s about the life John knows he would return to with him – crime scenes, foot chases, bomb scares, dangerously unbalanced criminals, desperate, angry people with nothing to lose. Calls from the police in the middle of the night. Regular murder attempts. Instability of every sort, from financial to personal. And a relationship with him – inexperienced, socially disastrous, unconventional. _Male_. Or there’s Mary. Despite her past, she has apparently started afresh in earnest. She is relatively pretty (though in his eyes, at least, no match for John). Intelligent, witty, charming, with a knack for making people like her, astute enough to know how to read people not only to the end of discerning potential criminal motivation, but also to disarm and charm them, make herself popular. She brings with her the excitement of a dangerous past and skills on par with John’s own, an easy rival to Sherlock’s in that sense, too. Being married to her frames John’s life in normalcy, meeting expectations of customary social practise and all of that which John’s life has lacked thus far. And she comes with a child, _their_ child. Their combined DNA and the living proof of John’s love for Mary. 

A clean sitting room cannot hope to compete with this. 

Sherlock gets up and puts on the kettle, feeling sick and cold. And yet, he thinks, fidgeting with a packet of loose tea and trying to decide what to make, how can he possibly not try, at least? He _is_ competing. There can be no question of that. He loves John – fiercely at that – and would do anything to persuade John to choose him. He can see that he is the lesser of the two options. There is no rational argument that could possibly convince John otherwise. His only hope lies in the fact that John is not particularly rational much of the time. He is a romantic, a man of fury and fire and passion, and Sherlock loves every part of it, illogical as that is. He thinks of John coolly shooting both his assailant and the sniper while also managing to take care of his stab wound all at the same time, and nearly has to lean against the worktop for support. The thought of John doing all of what he does, that which makes him the most inherently John, is breathtaking. He knows that he falls utterly short of that. And possibly Mary does, too, but the child decidedly does not. Alexandra. His daughter. There is no winning against the child, no matter how much he wants John. 

Sherlock dispiritedly makes a pot of tea and takes it back to the sofa to wait. John won’t come until the end of his shift. Still at least an hour to go. He looks down at himself. He is wearing black wool trousers that fit particularly well, and his old blue silk dressing gown in a pathetically transparent effort to bring out his eyes. (Should he change dressing gowns? Put on a shirt? Is he being too obvious? But he would just have to remove the shirt anyway for John to change the bandaging. Still.) Sherlock debates, then decides to leave it. He settles on tying the robe tightly closed so that it won’t look as though he’s trying too hard, and this launches a new debate: would John _want_ him to be trying, overtly competing for him? Would he consider it flattering, a stress, or just sad? Sherlock has no idea and no instinctive guess for this, either. 

The door downstairs opens quietly and he sits bolt upright. It can’t be John; it’s far too early. But the step on the stairs is as familiar as his own heartbeat: it _is_ John. He is on his feet before John reaches the top of the stairs, facing the door, his heart thudding audibly. John appears, stops when he sees Sherlock, then smiles. The smile is a bit uncertain. “Hi,” he says. 

“John,” Sherlock says stupidly. “You’re – earlier than I thought. I thought you said you weren’t coming until later.” 

John lifts his brows. “Do you want me to leave?” he asks, smiling a bit awkwardly. 

“No!” (Oh. Sherlock winces. Too much.) He clears his throat. “No,” he says again, calmly this time. “Please don’t. I just made some tea. Would you like some?” He is horrendously nervous, his hands cold, heart beating too fast, talking too quickly. He sounds ridiculous. 

“Er, yeah, all right,” John says, looking just as ill-at-ease. 

Sherlock goes into the kitchen to get another cup, grimacing at his own awkwardness. He wishes that he’d gone to John right away, made some move to touch him. Re-establish. 

Behind him, John clears his throat. “How’s the wound?” 

Sherlock comes back with the cup. “Fine. A bit sore, but fine.” He pours tea from the pot sitting on the coffee table, adds milk, and hands it to John. “I’ve been good, I promise.” 

John smiles, more affectionately than he might have intended, Sherlock thinks, and accepts the tea. “Good,” he says. “Do you – want to get straight to the dressing?” 

Sherlock frowns a little. “Are you in a hurry?” 

“No!” John says hastily. “Just – wondered if you wanted to get it out of the way. That’s all.” 

Sherlock relaxes very slightly. “All right, then,” he says warily. “Bathroom, then?” 

“Yeah. That would be good. My kit is in there.” John follows him down the corridor. 

Sherlock waits until John closes the door behind him and has got out his medical kit before untying his dressing gown. He does it slowly, feeling half self-conscious and half seductive, his eyes on John’s face as his fingers unknot the sash and peel back the layers of silk to reveal his bare skin. John’s eyes stick to it like magnets, his hands holding gauze and scissors as though he’s forgotten about them. His tongue comes out to touch his lower lip and Sherlock feels a bolt of desire streak through his body. He wants that tongue on his own again, craves John’s mouth like a drug. Not just his mouth: all of John. No one says anything for a moment, but Sherlock thinks that both of them must be aware of the charged air between them. Sherlock waits, holding his breath but feeling his pulse thudding through his veins. 

John keeps his eyes on the wound and carefully removes the bandaging. He makes a satisfied sound that sounds slightly feigned to Sherlock, reaches for a tube of ointment and uncaps it all without moving away at all. He dabs it gently along the line of the stitches and even this feather-light touch makes Sherlock’s skin bloom with heat. He lowers his head a bit, his hair brushing against John’s forehead. John closes his eyes for a moment, then carries on, placing gauze over the wound. “Hold that,” he says, his voice strained, and Sherlock does it without a word. The gauze gets taped down and their fingers touch. John breathes in sharply and doesn’t pull his hand away when Sherlock catches his hand and presses it to his skin. John looks up as far as his mouth then, not meeting his eyes yet, angling his face up into Sherlock’s. He puts both hands on Sherlock’s hips, so close that Sherlock can feel his breath on his lips. “I – can’t not do this,” John says, the ache of want clear in his voice. “I can’t even pretend that I can.” 

“Then don’t,” Sherlock says. He nudges his nose into John’s forehead, then follows it with his lips. John closes his eyes, mouth open as he breathes deeply. Emboldened by this, and simply unable to keep from responding to John this way, he noses at John’s cheek and then his nose, and this last seems to break whatever restraints were holding John back. He surges upward and claims Sherlock’s mouth, to Sherlock’s dizzy relief. He opens his mouth to John immediately, seeking his tongue and the rush of intimacy that comes with it. The kiss is strong and slow and makes Sherlock feel weak in the knees. He puts his hands on John’s face and holds it as they kiss and John responds by shifting closer still and putting his arms around Sherlock’s back. 

They part eventually, but John doesn’t move away. He kisses Sherlock on the chin and says, “I’m sorry. I know I’ve stayed away these past few days. It must have seemed like I was avoiding you. I wasn’t, exactly. I just – I’m trying to sort out what to do. How I feel.” 

“Do you not know?” Sherlock asks, his voice low. 

“I know how I feel about you,” John says. “It isn’t that.” He looks into Sherlock’s eyes and puts a hand on his cheek in reassurance. “It’s just – the rest of it. I have to be clear with myself about – what I want, what I need to do. All of that. But you – ” he kisses Sherlock’s mouth again for a long, lingering moment. “There’s no question there,” he murmurs, and Sherlock’s gut glows with heat. 

“John – ” His voice rises, anxious and needy and half-afraid to ask, but John doesn’t deny him. 

“Yes.” It’s all he says, nodding, but it’s enough: they move jointly into the bedroom, still kissing, and undress each other beside the bed. Sherlock pushes back the blankets and they get in beside each other. John pulls him close, face-to-face, and they twine their arms around each other and kiss and kiss. 

Sherlock feels as though he is dying, being sated and emptied and filled beyond his capacity over and over again, unable to decide whether it’s too much or not enough. No: it’s not enough, he thinks, and some heretofore unrealised instinct prompts him to roll John onto his back, revelling in the sensation of their bodies hardening at the same time, rising for each other. This is better than John saying it, saying that he wants him – he can feel this, measure it, prove it scientifically. There is little science in the way he is thrusting against John, no pre-thought rhythm or method to it – nothing more than sheer, unadulterated need. John’s hands are on him, though, steadying him, murmuring things as Sherlock pants against his temple. Somehow John manages to locate the lubricant Sherlock left under the pillow, just in case, and gets some onto his hand. He rubs it over them both, causing Sherlock to gasp helplessly, hips twisting and pushing forward into that brief touch, but then John puts both hands on his arse again. 

“Keep going,” he says, his voice low and intimate, his eyes roving over Sherlock’s. “I love that – it feels amazing. Keep doing that.” 

Sherlock had assumed that John would, at some point, take the lead back from him, show him nicely what to do. He’s never done this before, never – what is the horrible term – humped? – someone to the point of orgasm. It seems so puerile in a sense, doing nothing more than rubbing their genitals together, but the urge is to rut in this base, primal fashion is decidedly there. Is it biological? Never mind (not now). His thighs are pressing into John’s muscular ones, their erections sliding against each other’s, stomachs flexing and releasing together, and John’s fingers are digging into his arse. Their eyes are locked together, breathing too hard to kiss. “Is – this okay?” Sherlock manages, panting. His need is so sharp now that his limbs are trembling violently, but he is very much aware of the need to make sure that it’s right for John, too, enough for him. 

He needn’t have worried, it seems. John opens his mouth to answer but his breath catches in his throat. “Yeah – just a little – hard – ah – Sh – ahh!” he gasps out, and then Sherlock feels the twitch in John’s testicles just before he comes. His back lifts from the mattress, an arm clamping down hard over Sherlock’s back and his eyes close, his voice suspended, and then there is a rush of hot wetness and John’s body convulses in his arms. His breath releases a moment later, shuddering out, and there’s another release against Sherlock’s skin. “God – that was amazing, Sher – ” he pants, unable to finish, still holding Sherlock tightly, one hand on his arse, the other clutching his back. “Now you – keep going!” 

Sherlock can still feel John’s erection twitching and leaking against his and wants nothing more than to get there, too. He closes his eyes and thrusts harder, the rhythm he established becoming erratic. He almost feels that he is so desperate for the climax that he cannot get there. “John – ” He doesn’t know what he is asking, but somehow John understands anyway. His hand snakes down between them and grasps Sherlock’s penis, so hard he thinks it could burst, and rubs it hard and very fast, and it only takes about five or six seconds of this before Sherlock gasps in a lungful of air that sears through his lungs and holds there, and then his body seems to turn itself inside out in a torrent of pleasure so violent that his eyes are wet by the time it finishes howling out of him, spurting in filthy wantonness all over John’s stomach and chest. The sounds follow, an animalistic rush of air coming from his throat as he spends himself in John’s fist again. Later, it will embarrass him to recall, but at the moment he is helpless to the demands of his body at the peak of his climax. 

He collapses onto John, face buried in the side of his neck, heart pounding as though he just ran a marathon. The wetness of both their orgasms is warm and thick between them, and Sherlock finds that he could not possibly be less concerned about this. John’s arms are both around his back now, and John turns his face into Sherlock’s hair and presses kisses into it. “I love you,” he says, still breathing hard. “I didn’t say it the other day when you did, but it’s true. I do.” 

Sherlock can hardly speak yet. His brain feels half-dead from the strength of his orgasm. Nevertheless, he gets his arms beneath John’s back and holds him as tightly as his relaxed limbs will permit, almost rocking John in them. “Good,” he says roughly, and John pulls his mouth down to his own and kisses him thoroughly. Eventually they release each other and sprawl out, Sherlock draped half on John’s chest and half off. He can feel sweat cooling on his back and caught in John’s fine chest hair. “I never knew it could be like this,” he says, almost to his own surprise. His eyes are closed, his body drinking in the heat of John’s beneath him. 

John’s hand is trailing gently over his back and at this, he squeezes his arm once around Sherlock. “It’s the best thing there is,” he says, his voice gentle and warm. “I never thought it would happen for us, either, though. I’m still reeling at the fact that it’s happening at all, and trying not to feel guilty for feeling so incredibly happy about it.” 

Sherlock opens his eyes. “I know,” he says. There’s a short pause, then he asks the question he knows he probably shouldn’t. “You and Mary – are you still – ”

He stops and almost hears John’s eyebrows lifting. “Are you asking if I’m still sleeping with her?” he asks. 

Sherlock feels slightly admonished, but doesn’t retract the question. “Are you?” he asks, very starkly. “Perhaps I haven’t the right to know, but – haven’t I?” He angles his face so that he can see John’s. 

John moves his hand to Sherlock’s hair and cards his fingers through it. “I suppose you do,” he concedes. “It’s just hard to talk about, I guess. No. I haven’t. Not since we started – this.”

Sherlock hesitates, the unasked obvious follow-up hovering in the air between them. “But before?” he asks, not specifying, his voice trailing off. 

John sighs. “Once, when I first went back,” he says. “It wasn’t very good, if you want to know. Mary wasn’t thrilled.” 

Sherlock wants to ask, but the jealousy of knowing that it happened again so recently is also burning a hole in his chest. He finds he cannot speak. 

John’s fingers tighten, stroking harder. “And you want to know why,” he says, almost to himself. “The truth is pretty straightforward: I wasn’t really feeling it yet. I was hoping it would get better with time. It just felt like the thing to do, I guess, and I hadn’t for half a year by that point, so I thought – but for me, at least, it was more about – well, getting off, to be crude. More about that than about Mary. And it’s not her fault, but she was hugely pregnant, obviously, and – it wasn’t like it was before.”

“But before – you liked it, obviously,” Sherlock says, both hating and needing to know. 

John sighs again. “I liked having sex,” he says. “It wasn’t anything particularly spectacular. Not like this.” He finds Sherlock’s eyes. “Does that make you feel any better?” 

Sherlock makes a neutral sound. “A bit, I suppose.”

John turns onto his side and they rearrange themselves face-to-face. “Listen,” he says intensely. “I have wanted this – you – for longer than I can tell you, and when even this, what we just did, is far more exciting and arousing than anything else I’ve ever done with anyone, I can’t even imagine what lies ahead. I mean that. All three times have been incredible so far.” 

Sherlock searches his eyes, wanting to be reassured. “I was – slow,” he says briefly. 

“It very rarely happens at the exact same time,” John tells him, smiling. “And it was perfectly normal.” It’s his turn to hesitate. “Had you ever, before – ?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “But you knew that,” he says. “Mycroft said, that day.” 

“That was before Janine,” John says pointedly. “And for that matter, Irene Adler, too.” 

Sherlock gives a snort to show what he thinks of the latter. “Nothing on either account, I’m afraid.” 

“Don’t be,” John says fiercely. “Do you have any _idea_ how jealous I was?!”

Sherlock smiles. Part of him wants to ask whether John’s ever done anything with another male before, but part of him isn’t ready to know, so he lets it go. “Can you stay here tonight?” he asks wistfully, fully expecting John to say no. “Say it’s for the case or something?” 

John hesitates. “I shouldn’t,” he says. “I left work early as it was. I just couldn’t wait an hour more to see you again, once I knew I was going to.” 

This makes Sherlock smile, too, but – “Do you need to be at home with the baby tonight?”

John sighs. “I’m not sure,” he says. “Not to my knowledge. I don’t think Mary had plans, per se. I just…” His voice fades. He thinks for a moment, then says, “How about this: let’s have supper and see how it goes.”

“All right,” Sherlock agrees cautiously. “What do you want to do?” 

John’s mouth twists a bit sadly. “What I’d really like is to cook with you, pretend we’re still living together and that I don’t have this whole other life to think about. But I also don’t want to pretend a damned thing. Why don’t we order in? I’d like to eat naked with you.” 

Sherlock begins to smile at this image. An entire world of how sensual John Watson can be when provoked potentially lies ahead – if only he can find some way to convince him to stay. “I’m open to that,” he says, and John gives a laugh so lazy and sexual that Sherlock’s gut aches with a want even deeper than his surface desire. 

*** 

To his great satisfaction, John stays overnight. As Sherlock half-predicted and half-hoped, John’s stated desire for them to eat together leads to a good deal of touching on the sofa. John waits until Sherlock is hard and panting in his ear as they stroke each other before putting his lips to Sherlock’s ear and whispering, “I want you in my mouth. Can I try that?” 

Sherlock’s pulse trebles instantly and his entire body shudders with a wave of desire so intense he cannot breathe. “Here?” he manages to ask, and John makes an undecided sound. 

“Your call,” he says. “We can go to the bedroom if you’d be more comfortable there.” 

“It’s just – Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock says, sounding apologetic to his own ears, but he cannot think of anything less appealing than Mrs Hudson walking in on John doing that to him, or being able to relax enough to enjoy it with the constant threat of that occurring. 

“Say no more,” John says darkly, and they go back into the bedroom. John has him lie back on his elbows, arranging himself on his front between Sherlock’s thighs, and the first touch of his mouth makes Sherlock inhale so sharply that he nearly chokes on the air, his legs jerking, hips twisting upward despite John’s hold on them. John makes a satisfied sound. “I’ve never done this before,” he says, which warms the part of Sherlock that secretly wondered, and then John’s mouth dips hotly over him again and he stops being able to think at all. The next several minutes pass in a blur of rising pleasure swirling around him in vivid colour and when he comes, it’s with the same sense of helplessness and loss of control as before, but he almost doesn’t even mind. And after, John is already so close that it only takes a few fevered tugs before John is cursing and coming into his hand and forearm. He kisses Sherlock still panting, and when he agrees to stay and sleep with him, it takes very little persuasion at all. 

Sherlock falls asleep with both arms around John, warning himself not to believe that things will stay this way, but the warmth of John against himself is so difficult to doubt. 

In the morning, John wakes early. He is out of bed and mostly dressed when Sherlock wakes. When he hears Sherlock stir, he comes to the side of the bed. “Sorry,” he says, wincing a little. “I’d have loved to have a lie-in with you, but I’ve really got to get to the clinic.”

“Okay,” Sherlock says, his voice scratchy from sleep. The fog clears slowly from his mind and he wants to ask when the next time will be, when he’ll next get to be with John this way again. 

John must be able to read him far better than Sherlock is able to in reverse, because he smiles a bit and sits down on the edge of the bed. “The entire thing – afternoon, evening, night – it was fantastic, Sherlock. You know I’ve got to – I’ll get things sorted. Somehow.”

Sherlock accepts this. (What choice does he have?) “All right,” he says, still sleepy. He yawns. 

John bends and kisses his forehead. Sherlock makes a discontented sound and reaches for John’s face and John kisses him properly, morning breath and all. “I’ll be in touch. Soon,” he promises, already standing up. 

Sherlock’s mouth is still tingling for more, his mind already racing ahead to attempt to calculate the next time he will have John’s mouth on his, already feeling its absence keenly. “John,” he says suddenly, and John stops in the doorway and looks back. 

“Yeah?” he asks. 

“Call me later, or – text, or something,” Sherlock says spontaneously, and John smiles. 

“I will,” he says, and goes. 

Sherlock attempts to go back to sleep, but without John there next to him, sleep seems highly overrated. He gets up and wanders into the shower instead, yawning and reviewing every minute they spent together. It’s hopelessly sentimental, but he’s known for some time that his ability to focus on essentials simply does not exist when it comes to John. 

Thirty minutes later, his phone pings with a text. He goes to it, hoping (pathetic, he scolds himself, nonetheless reaching for it) that it’s John. It isn’t: it’s Mary. Something unpleasant stirs in his gut. What could Mary want of him? He unlocks the screen to read the message. 

_Do you know where John is?_  
_It’s urgent, Sherlock._

Sherlock frowns at the message. After a moment’s thought, he texts back. _At the clinic, presumably._ He sends the message and waits, but instead of texting back, Mary calls. He answers it. “Mary.” There is little warmth in his voice – nor is there, he discovers, in hers. 

“This is urgent, Sherlock,” she repeats aloud. “John never arrived at the clinic.” 

Sherlock’s alertness level spikes. “What? How do you know?” 

There is a slight pause. “I run surveillance,” Mary tells him, her tone acerbic. “I know he was at Baker Street last night. I assume he left for the clinic from there. Meanwhile, he never arrived at the clinic and I can’t trace his phone because it’s been switched off.”

Sherlock’s mind is racing. He decides to skip over the question of the fact that Mary has been essentially stalking John. “Where did you lose the signal?” 

“I’m in a cab, coming to get you now,” she says instead of answering him. “We’ll go there together.” 

Sherlock pauses. “Mary – ”

“Look,” she interrupts. “Whatever we have to deal with, we’ll deal with it later. We need to find out what’s happened to John, and we’ll need to work together. You need me for this.” 

Sherlock feels his expression sour. “You mean, you need me,” he corrects her. 

“You need my information,” Mary insists. “I don’t know where he is now, but I know where he left the taxi, and I know where the taxi is now.” 

“Just tell me!” Sherlock is both irritated and on a deeper level, he realises, afraid. Nothing can happen to John. Not again. 

“Be downstairs in three minutes,” Mary tells him, and disconnects. 

Sherlock curses and shoves the phone into his pocket, then flies toward his coat and shoes. Damn Mary and her insistence on keeping control of all of this! She will only slow him down! He is outside and waiting on the pavement when the taxi swings over, and he yanks the right side door open before it’s come to a stop. “Where is he?” he demands, skipping preamble. 

Mary’s mouth is set in a particularly disagreeable position. Without answering, she turns her phone toward him, the map showing a blinking red dot and suddenly Sherlock knows precisely where they’re going. John was right not to have wanted him to go there. Not alone. His abdomen clenches. John is extremely capable, but Moriarty has never played fair. “No brilliant thoughts?” Mary asks, cutting into his thoughts, her voice heavily sarcastic. 

Sherlock looks out the window. “No.” 

“ _This_ is why I didn’t want – ” She stops herself mid-sentence. “Never mind.” She leans forward. “Drive faster, please!” 

The cabbie shakes his head. “Sorry, miss. Got to obey the traffic laws and all that.” He chuckles. 

The laugh dies abruptly as the slender barrel of a small pistol nuzzles into his left temple, appearing seemingly out of nowhere in Mary’s hand. “Drive,” she tells the driver softly, her voice dangerous and glacially calm. “Or you’ll have bigger problems to worry about than a speeding ticket.” 

Sherlock glances at her briefly. So much for having turned a new leaf, he thinks, keeping his gaze on the buildings passing by and trying not to think of John. 

Mary leans back again. “Have you got a plan you’d care to share with me?” she asks. 

Sherlock shakes his head. “Impossible to plan with no prior information.” 

Mary’s mouth twists a little. “Let’s get one thing straight, Sherlock,” she says, very directly. “There is only one person that I would bring myself out of retirement for like this. I think that you, of all people, should know by now what lengths I would go to in order to protect him. So if you’re holding out on me because you want to be the one to save him or some such crap, know that I won’t let you stand in my way, either.” 

Sherlock lifts his brows coolly. “I am well aware of that, yes. I am not holding out on you. I also recall that you’re very much willing to let me be the one to run into a fire to pull him out. I assume that’s why I’m here. You needn’t worry. I will always be on hand to pull John out of the fire.” 

Mary’s face hardens. “There is a lot that I could say right now, but I’m not going to waste my breath.”

For a heart beat they just stare at each other, neither one moving, then Sherlock turns away. “Turn here,” he tells the driver. 

The driver turns immediately. “Why did you say that?” Mary asks, frowning at the map on her phone. “I know where the taxi is, and John’s phone is – ”

“That will be a decoy, programmed to mimic the signal of John’s,” Sherlock tells her. “John’s phone is probably still with him. I have its GPS tag logged into my phone.” He turns the screen toward Mary. “John is here.” 

Mary squints at the map. “There? That’s a – ” She stops abruptly, an expression of alarm crossing her features. 

Sherlock allows himself to feel smug in spite of his deeper worry. “I thought you might recognise it,” he says. “After all, it’s where we all first met, in a manner of speaking.”

Mary shakes her head and turns away, her face red.

Sherlock directs the driver down the side streets until they reach the pool. He pays the driver, with a hefty tip and mutters, “Just forget you ever saw us,” then claps the man on the shoulder and gets out. He leads the way inside, Mary hovering just over his shoulder. He thinks unwittingly of the healing stab wound in his side and that he would prefer she chose any other place to position herself, but lets it go. “This way,” he says. He picks the external lock to the boys’ changing rooms and moves through it in the dark, Mary following silently. 

“Does John know that you stalk him this way?” Mary asks, her voice sour. 

“Does John know that you’re still running surveillance all across the city?” Sherlock responds, and Mary makes a derisive sound. 

“Hardly just the city of London, Sherlock,” she says dryly. 

“Hardly retired, then,” Sherlock returns, and shushes her before she can respond as he carefully opens the door leading onto the pool deck. 

The lights are only partially on, and sitting in the gloom is Moriarty, tied to a chair with lane-dividing ropes and gagged with a foam buoy. John is pacing the deck behind him and looks up as Sherlock and Mary emerge from the changing room. He smirks at Sherlock. “Took you long enough.” 

He and Moriarty are both very wet in their clothes. They fought, then, Sherlock surmises, and clearly John was the victor. “Congratulations,” he says, not hiding his pride. “Sorry I took so long.” 

“You couldn’t have known I was abducted,” John says, and he allows his eyes to linger on Sherlock’s for just a moment, a glow of warmth and their mutual triumph at John’s accomplishment passing between them. Then John’s eyes shift to his wife. “But you did,” he says. “You were still watching. How long did it take you to realise?” 

Mary raises her eyebrows. “Which?” she asks coolly. “That you hadn’t made it to the clinic? Or that you were cheating on me?” 

Moriarty says something that sounds like “I knew it” from behind the gag, rolling his eyes. 

This stops John, a look of apprehension coming across his face. “Mary – ”

“I was only watching to keep you safe,” she tells him, her voice even, but now Sherlock can hear the full weight of how upset she is behind it. “I thought you would grant me that much, to use my skill set on behalf of the safety of us, of our family. But it was just never going to be enough for you, was it?” 

John’s face is pained. “When did you – ” he starts, and Mary cuts him off. 

“The other night, when you told me you were with Sherlock on a case. You told me that from his bedroom at Baker Street. Nice, John. Really nice.” Mary raises her gun and levels it at Moriarty’s face. “Meanwhile, we have Moriarty to deal with. The answer to that is quite simple.” 

Sherlock realises too late, taking a step toward Moriarty. “Mary, don’t – !!”

A single shot is all it takes. It leaves a perfect round mark just off the centre of Moriarty’s forehead, a spray of blood and bone and brain matter splattered on the tile behind him. Sherlock stares in shock. John reacts first, his yell echoing off the ceramic. “Mary, what the hell did you _do_ that for?! He was a bound prisoner, for God’s sake!” He is gaping at her, his face full of fury. “We would have interrogated him, arrested him, put him on trial – what were you thinking??”

Mary doesn’t rise to his wrath. She goes over and lifts one of Moriarty’s wrists, unbuttons the sleeve of his jacket and shirt, and pushes up the sleeve. “It’s really him this time,” she says, looking back over her shoulder to Sherlock. “Now you have a positive identification from possibly the only person alive who could have made one.”

Sherlock still feels half-stunned. He walks over and looks at Moriarty’s forearm. There is a small tattoo in black ink just inside the elbow. “A magpie,” he says. “I see. Yes.” 

Mary straightens up. “That was for Magnussen,” she says, her voice very level. “We’re even now, so John can stop plaguing me about thanking you for that. I won’t apologise for shooting though, considering that you’re having an affair with my husband.” 

Sherlock feels his lips compress a little. “Fair enough. Though I would really have preferred to have had the chance to ask him for some information, such as where he’s been for the past three years, why he only chose to re-emerge now, et cetera.”

Mary smirks, though there’s little real humour in it. “He won’t be answering any questions now. Sorry, Sherlock. Too late.” Sherlock makes to respond, irritated with her flippancy, but Mary has finished with him, turning to face John instead. “As for you,” she says, “I’d already been realising lately that this just isn’t going to work. Is it.” This is not a question. 

John looks apprehensive. “How do you mean? Besides, er…” He looks briefly at Sherlock, his shoulders tense. 

Mary sounds contemptuous. “I really did start fresh, you know. I left everything I was in the past. If it hadn’t been for Magnussen, you never would have known that I had a past at all. I was happy to leave it, once I’d met you. You were all I wanted.”

“And yet you were still running surveillance,” Sherlock puts in, rolling his eyes. “Not to mention the fact that you possess an array of firearms.” 

“Shut up, Sherlock,” Mary says evenly, without looking at him. “This is about me and John.” She addresses John again. “But _you_ weren’t ready to leave this behind. And obviously you weren’t about to give Sherlock up for my sake, either. It comes down to this: you’re in love with someone else. We have a child whose name you can hardly say without wincing. I see it in your eyes all the time: she’s the barrier that keeps you from the life you really want. I know that. She and I both. I could have been whatever Sherlock is to you, but you were never ready to give that up, settle down and have a family. I really did want out. But you’re addicted to this life as much as he is. And I can’t have that.” 

John is watching her warily, and Sherlock is hardly breathing. “What are you saying?” John asks. His fists clench and release twice. 

“I’m leaving you,” Mary informs him. “Obviously we’re finished, you and I, and I hardly think you’re going to fight me for custody of our daughter.” 

“Mary,” Sherlock interrupts. “You cannot prevent John from seeing his daughter.”

“I have no intention of doing that,” Mary tells him coldly, finally looking at him. “For her sake, I won’t disappear. Your brother would probably find me eventually if I did, anyway. Eventually. But I’m not running away.” She looks back at John. “Any objections, or shall we just call it a day?” 

John is still looking at Moriarty’s still form, his head slumped backwards, dripping gore onto the pool tiles. “This was monstrous,” he says. “You shot a man while he was tied to a chair. I don’t know what your definition of ‘turning a new leaf’ is, but it sure as hell isn’t this!” 

“Oh, by all means, use whatever means necessary to deflect from the fact that you’ve been fucking someone who isn’t me!” Mary snaps. 

John’s mouth twists. “Actually, if you want to know, we haven’t even got to that yet,” he retorts. “You’re rather missing the point here!” 

“No, _you_ are,” Mary throws back, and Sherlock decides to intervene. 

“Stop, both of you,” he says, rather impatiently. “We need to get rid of the body and get out of here unless we all want to be arrested. I am going to phone Mycroft. I’m sure that he will be happy enough to have had Moriarty eliminated once and for all. We won’t mention the fact that he was bound and gagged at the time, though he’ll likely deduce that for himself. And then I propose we go our separate ways.” 

John looks at him with something like alarm. “What do you mean, ‘separate ways’?” he demands. “I want to come home with you.” 

Sherlock looks back at him for a long moment. “Do you?” he asks. “You should be very sure before you say that.” 

“He’s all yours,” Mary puts in, her voice filled with disgust. “I’ve had enough.” 

A look of anger passes over John’s face, then recedes as he looks back at Sherlock, then comes over to him. “I _am_ very sure,” he says, his voice low. “I was already ninety-eight percent of the way to having made this decision before this, you know. I almost told you this morning before I left.”

Sherlock feels a swell of emotion so strong he is afraid to allow himself to speak, his throat tight. He swallows, looking into John’s eyes. “Then come home,” he manages at last, and John smiles and him, and nods. 

*** 

That night, it feels as though a week has passed since the previous one. They’re sitting on the sofa in what Sherlock can now refer with no small amount of satisfaction as _their_ sitting room again, legs tangled together. They’re just finishing watching Mycroft’s CCTV recording of John’s confrontation with Moriarty at the pool. John is not only tremendously competent, but also has flair, Sherlock notes, the observation causing blood to flood his lower parts and cause his trousers to fit rather tightly. On the screen, John allows himself to be walked out onto the pool deck with a pistol to his back, held by Moriarty himself for once, and asked if there were snipers this time. When Moriarty said no, John wasted no time in disarming him with such ease that Sherlock wonders aloud how he managed to allow himself to be abducted in the first place. 

“He was the cab driver,” John tells him. “And I was unarmed. So I just had to wait until we got out of the car.”

“I see,” Sherlock says. They watch as John and Moriarty struggle in hand-to-hand combat, Moriarty obviously outmatched physically, but he manages to trip John at one point, causing them both to stagger and then fall into the pool. The struggle continues in the water until John gains the upper hand once again and hauls Moriarty out by the lapels of his expensive suit, tying him to a nearby chair with his hands behind his back. _And now we wait,_ he says in the black-and-white video. _For what?_ Moriarty returns sullenly, spitting out chlorinated water. _For Sherlock,_ John replies, sounding bored. _It’s up to him what we do with you. After all, you made him jump off a building. You stabbed him and tried to shoot him._ Moriarty favours John with a leer. _Actually, darling, my sniper was aiming at you._ “You’re phenomenal,” Sherlock says admiringly as the footage rolls on. He and Mary emerge onto the pool deck and he picks up the remote controller and pauses the video. 

John leans over and kisses him on the cheek, an arm already around his shoulders. “You’re not so bad, yourself.” 

Sherlock turns his face and John gets his silent request and kisses him on the mouth, then again, and then a third time. “Mycroft says we don’t have to do anything more,” he says, his mind far more on John than on Moriarty and the case. “So we won’t have to report or anything tomorrow…” 

He trails off and John pulls back far enough to look into his eyes and smile. “I see,” he says. “And tomorrow is Saturday, so I’m not working, either.” 

Sherlock begins to smile back. It fades, though. Somehow there wasn’t time to ask, earlier, what with dealing with Mycroft and Lestrade and getting Mary’s confirmation on record that this time, it really was Moriarty. Then the three of them went back to the flat and packed, Mary drinking tea in the kitchen and ignoring the two of them as they packed John’s few belongings into boxes and a suitcase, John changing out of his wet clothes as they packed up the rest of his things. Sherlock took it all out of the waiting taxi, tactfully leaving John alone with Mary and their daughter for a final goodbye. The details haven’t been ironed out yet, but he assumes there will be visits. That’s all right. With Mrs Hudson just downstairs, surely they can handle having an infant about one or two weekends per month. It’s up to John, as he’s told John. And he thinks it’s all right, but there is a lingering need to check. To be certain. “You’re sure about this?” he asks, searching John’s eyes. “Really sure?” 

John smiles at him. “Do I seem unsure?” 

“No, but…”

John takes his hand and moves it down to his crotch, which is pleasingly firm already. “Does this feel unsure?” 

“No, but that could just – ”

“I love you,” John interrupts, and Sherlock stops trying to object as John kisses him. The kiss deepens quickly, the footage of their tense trio on the screen forgotten, Moriarty looking incredulously on from behind his gag forgotten. Sherlock puts his arms fully around John and holds him as close to himself as he can. 

It feels unbelievable. It’s hardly credible, yet here it is: against all odds, despite Mary having (mostly) moved on and wanting a quiet, domestic life, despite the child who bears John’s nose and name, despite the beige perfection of the suburbs, John has chosen to be here. Chosen _him_. The battle is over, and somehow, despite it beggaring belief, Sherlock has won. 

To the victor the spoils, he thinks. “Let’s go to bed,” he says, his voice lower than he’d intended it to come out, but it works: John assents immediately. They move jointly off the sofa and down the corridor to the bedroom and Sherlock feels something which must be joy radiating from every pore of his being. 

Life has just become very sweet, indeed. 

*


End file.
